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It has been my experience that IT eliminates the tedious chores in manufacturing and planning, and at the same time allows workers lacking refined skills to step into jobs that would otherwise be beyond their ability to execute.

A dispatcher can quickly do the tasks that would require 5-10 years experience to perform by using well-designed dispatching software. Likewise, someone who is not a craftsman can do the work on an assembly line that formerly took an experienced metalworker or woodworker.

Hmmm if we HAD factories back in America and a more corporate friendly tax plan well yesm, I'd say there would create more jobs, heck I used to work at a couple computer companies in the late 70's early 80's and people were so happy just to get factory line jobs in a county that had dumped their canneries and strved for jobs( Santa Cruz/Scotts Valley)

I haven't read the whole article but that "if' in my first paragraph is one big IF! Hoewver if things continue the way they are, there will be fewer jobs, and it sure would be nice to get our kids back into horticulture, agriculture, creating desalination plants so big cities like LA can sustain themselves, learn from Israel. BIG oil pipelines and no more moratoriums and BIGGER corporations and maybe create and explosive factory with cute lil IED's in Dearborn( okay maybe not a good idea) Don't know about any of you but working on a computer these days seemingly takes more time( designing home with Cad ) seems to be slower than vellum and an eraser. Okay now I'll READ the article and see how far off I am in replying..hey it's 0355 here, a break please, ugh insomnia!

One cannot look at employment and technology in isolation. There is still plenty, if not much more, manufacturing in the world today (somebody has to make the computers, industrial robots, and smart phones). But two factors have shifted this jobs offshore: the difference in labor costs and the difference in regulatory costs. One of those is hard to compete with, the other we simply ceded to the third world.

Another issue is how we catorgorize things. The person who assembles the industrial robot is considered in a manufacturing job, but the person who wrote the software controlling the robot is not. The same applies to the Foxconn Chinese slave laborers who assemble the iPhone and the workers in California who write iOS.

Finally, for those jobs that cannot be outsourced (agriculture), we have allowed these jobs to effectively be outsourced via illegal immigration.

We can talk all we want about agricultural jobs being low-paying, but to import an underclass to do this work when we have an in-place, unemployed underclass in the same geography suggests some unemployment is a choice.

Does information technology destroy or create jobs?

Information technology has created tens of millions of jobs - in China, India, and other Third World pits. Not so many in the US, though. That not the fault of new technology. That's the direct result of government and corporate policy.

This is no coincidence, Brynjolfsson and McAfee say. For example, increasing automation has dramatically reduced the need for customer service workers across many industries, such as airline reservations or directory assistance, the authors point out

Damn kiosks! Is there any reason for hope that at least all the people put out of work are bitter clingers?? < / The Won mode >