Skilled vs Unskilled

To preface this I need to say that while this blog is generally about intentionality as we are applying it to our lives I also want to use it as a place that I can stretch my mental muscles in regards to other topics. It still is more practically intentional by continuing to develop my writing skills as well as aiding in my learning consistency by writing every day... all that to say I'm writing about economics and social theory today.

The workforce has developed and changed significantly over the past several decades. It wasn't that long ago that there were a lot of very good paying jobs doing things that did not require a large amount specific skills or training. These jobs resided primarily in manufacturing and other industrial fields. The reason for this was that these industries were producing high value products like cars and steel and they required a lot of human interaction to keep the machines and other processes functioning. Because of the high value of the products coupled with organized labor these relatively unskilled jobs were able to provide a good wage.

Sidenote: I am defining "unskilled" in this context to mean there isn't any specialized training or college degree required. You could graduate high school and walk into an unskilled job.

As manufacturing began to get outsourced to take advantage of cheap labor overseas these jobs began to disappear here in the US, but they still existed. As time has progressed however, computers and robot automation has lead to a revolution in manufacturing processes as well as how almost all work is done. This has meant that for any application where there is a high value product (like cars as mentioned before) all the simple tasks that were done by unskilled labor int he past are now done by robots. The automotive industry still has lots of employees, but now they are highly skilled engineers and technicians who know how to operate and maintain high tech equipment.

This shift that this has brought about economically is profound. Today the only unskilled labor that exists for the most part is in very low value product markets, namely restaurants and retail where automation has not made very effective inroads. In these jobs the pay is very low because the final value of the products are low (in comparison to cars). So low in fact that it is really impossible to live off of the pay in most of these positions.

The trend here is only going to continue. Automation is going to improve. The number of jobs requiring little or no skill is going to continue to drop. Businesses like Amazon, Netflix, and Uber are going to disrupt traditional business models reducing unskilled staffing requirements. The irony here is that advocates of higher minimum wages while trying to improve the lot of poorly paid unskilled workers are only increasing the likelihood that those jobs will get streamlined and automated away.

The only real long term solution is to acknowledge that we are reaching a point where everyone has to become skilled labor. That doesn't mean we have to all be engineers and technicians, but it does mean that everyone will need to have some level of specialization that outstrips the abilities of our automation underlords. Not only that but we need to figure out a way to do this that doesn't involve everyone going $250k into college debt or even going to college at all.

Overall I think this is a good thing though. It means that instead of having a large portion of our workforce required for non-specialized unfun work we are becoming freed up to allow everyone to become skilled in something that hopefully they find interesting and rewarding. It will be an exciting adventure to get there.