Future of Work

Upon entering a new wave of technological advancement, there are some impacts we must consider for the human race. The main one being job displacement, however not everyone has the same chance of being displaced. After the great recession, people living in rural areas gained back jobs at a significantly lower rate than people living in more heavily populated areas (according to the first graph on the article). This, to me, makes sense because there are many more diverse job opportunities in more heavily populated areas. This would give people in those areas a lower chance of being unemployed. Whereas in rural areas, there may be a limited array of jobs that people can do, giving them a higher chance of being unemployed. Considering this, one might think that movement to more populated areas would be high, however that is not the case. In general, people living in rural areas are not moving to the city to find jobs (according to the second graph). The inflow and outflow of these five different sections are relatively the same for all of them. The sections are urban core, urban periphery, niche cities, mixed middle and low growth and rural areas. For the urban core and low growth/rural areas, the inflow is actually lower than the outflow, whereas with the other three it is the other way around. The last thing to mention is what type of jobs are going to be hit the hardest by the new wave of automation, which are typically low wage jobs. The three highest jobs that have the potential to be displaced are food prep workers, retail salespeople and office clerks. These jobs aren't projected to have the highest percentage of displacement, however the amount of people displaced in these three jobs will be the highest (according to the fifth graph). I am not entirely sure how all of this will affect me personally as I do not know what I want to do yet, but I can definitely see the impact this will and is having on many different people.