💡Robopocalypse postponed
Robots haven’t replaced the humans in the workforce – for now. They also haven’t disrupted the entrenched tension between workers’ rights and the free market. The Covid-19 pandemic caused a significant rupture in the global labour market, but that has more to do with declining consumer spending, frozen economies and increased economic uncertainty than robots taking human jobs.Â
Despite the (yet) undelivered robopocalypse, technology is fundamentally reshaping the nature of work. As I noted in The Economist this month, companies that invested in advanced technologies have been on hiring sprees throughout the pandemic (consider Amazon or Netflix).
Aside from the pressures of Covid-19, human jobs are being created (at an impressive clip) and the robopocalypse has mostly been contained. Technology is playing a positive role here: it is technology-deep firms, whether in the tech sector or elsewhere, that have represented the growth sectors in our economies during this …