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More companies, smaller companies
The cost to workers
Telling someone in their 50s that the skill they have used for 20 or 30 years is no longer relevant, and that they should go back to school or learn something on the weekends, is cruel. Miners were once told to go learn to code, and so were reporters when layoffs hit.
Even where the answer is training and upskilling, a real program has to be built around it. The advice that holds for everyone is to be adaptable and a lifelong learner.
Replit's outlook
Replit, an AI software-building company, expects to have more employees in three years. Its business can go into many domains, and its mission is to democratize software: programming, design, and entrepreneurship, plus other areas where computers can be made easier, more fun, and more productive to use.
How have past technologies changed total job counts?
A 2005 report from the US Department of Agriculture found that about 41 percent of American workers were employed in farming in 1900 and under 2 percent were by 2000. Machines such as tractors and combines raised output per worker far beyond what hand labor could do. Total employment still grew over that century, with workers moving into manufacturing, services, and many occupations that did not exist in 1900. Economists such as David Autor have documented how new job titles appear in each decade.
Why do young firms create so many new jobs?
The economists John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin, and Javier Miranda analyzed US Census data in a 2013 paper titled Who Creates Jobs? Small versus Large versus Young. They found that firm age, rather than firm size, explains most of the high job creation attributed to small businesses. New firms start with a few employees, and each one that survives adds jobs as it grows. Many startups also fail within their first years, which erases some of those jobs.
Why do economists doubt there is a fixed number of jobs?
The idea that a fixed amount of work exists to be divided among workers is called the lump of labor fallacy. The British economist David Frederick Schloss coined the term in 1892 while criticizing trade union arguments for shorter hours. Economists point out that when a task becomes cheaper, demand and spending often shift to new goods and services, which creates new work. Labor-market data from the twentieth century, which saw big technological change alongside rising employment, is the evidence most often cited.