The Impact of Technology on Middle Class Jobs in Canada

This question asks about the effect that rapidly improving technologies will have on the middle-class job market in Canada. Technology has been synonymous with change in the work force since the industrial revolution. Improving technology is now capable of affecting the middle class, “For instance, computer programs are capable of reviewing case law and legal precedent more efficiently than humans, which has lowered the demand for legal clerks. ” (Beckman, 2012). How will the economy be impacted by this change in the work force? Will new jobs be available to take the place of the ones lost, or will the gap between the rich and the poor simply widen? I chose this topic because I’m interested in whether or not improving technologies will actually be beneficial for the general public in Canada, or if they will be bad for the work force and negatively impact the economy.

This research is relevant to all organizations, but in particular to the industries that are being really heavily affected by automation such as Manufacturing and Agriculture. The rise in technology has drastically, and will continue to affect people employed in agriculture, “In 1900, 41 percent of the US workforce was employed in agriculture; by 2000, that share had fallen to 2 percent. ” (Autor 2014). “Economists cannot say for certain why men are turning away from work, but one explanation is that technological change has helped eliminate the jobs for which many are best suited. Since 2000, the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen by almost 5 million, or about 30 percent. ” (Thompson, 2015). Therefore, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters would be very interested and concerned as well as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in this nature of work-as it will dictate the consequence to their labor forces. Unions of those employed in middle-class, medium-skilled sector could also find great interest in this work in future protection of their employees. This research would also be of use to organizations concerned with employment rates, in Ontario that would be Employment Ontario. 4. Autor, D. H. (2015).

Why Are There Still So Many Jobs

The History and Future of Workplace Automation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29 (3): 1-6. Autor argues a positive side of the technological rise in relation to job availability – noting that unemployment rate has never been lower. He explains the interaction between employment and automation, and how it is a positive one (for humans). He also argues how automation pushes humans in a positive direction as it replaces menial tasks and manual labor, making way for humans to focus on advancement-which shows the rise in skilled labor. Autor, D. H. (2014). Skills, Education, and the Rise of Earnings Inequality among the ‘Other 99 Percent. ’ Science 344(6186): 843–51. In this piece Autor argues a different perspective in which he acknowledges that there is a rise in earning inequality due to the need for skills. This need for skills in intrinsically linked to automation and increasing difficulty in human work methods. This is because societies that are technologically advanced require specific, advanced skill sets. Schwab, K. (2016). The fourth industrial revolution.

Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum

In this book Schwab discusses how previous revolutions (such as agricultural and industrial) made human life easier through proponents like mass production. He then discusses the current technological revolution occurring and discusses how a massive shift is that a question being reframed is ‘what does it mean to be human’? Do we have value in the work force if technology can do tasks we initially did at a more efficient and effective rate? Thompson, D. (2015). A world without work. The Atlantic, 316(1), 50-61. This article discusses how this technological revolution and the emergence of AI are turning the work force upside down. When technology can do our jobs more efficient and effectively, why hire humans? It draws a comparison to ghost towns across the USA such as Youngstown that are abandoned once natural resources run out, causing cultural ‘cohesion’ to dissolve in the absence of work. They really ask “Is any job truly safe?”. Burke, R. J. , & Ng, E. (2006). The changing nature of work and organizations: Implications for human resource management.

Human Resource Management Review

This journal outlines the current state of the work force in Canada, demographic changes which will alter the workforce [such as an aging population, increasing diversity, ‘NetGen’ (the generation born between 1980 and 1995)], changes in technology [such as deskilling (technology replacing jobs previously operated by humans}, telecommuting/distributed work, changes in communication/structure of the work force], globalization and implications. It discusses how work now requires high technological literacy (possessed by NetGen)-but even this technological literacy may not be enough, as deskilling shows that machines are more efficient that human beings.