Shrinking Job Opportunity || Scarcity of Jobs || Big Problems Ahead-III

A vast majority of the global population depends on jobs and similar things for sustaining their livelihood, and this is a good thing for the growth of a nation and progress for humanity as a species. As with jobs we take work from people from across the globe in return for some monetary assets and similar things to achieve something that can’t be accomplished by only a single pair of hands.

Source: il4Syrians.org

Now, this thing is something like commensalism, where both of the sides get the benefit, the employee gets monetary assets to support education, healthcare, and other necessities of self or/and family. And on the other hand, the employer gets the product ready to sell in exchange for some monetary assets to fulfill the needs of self and/or family, and along with the employee’s needs.

Indeed jobs keep this vicious cycle of economy running and alive and hence the same with the market. Because half of the total population depend on jobs for their livelihood in 2021 (as per Statista)

Fig: Dependency of the world population on jobs :: Source: Statista

But was this the same throughout the recorded history of employment? And will this metric change in the coming years? If yes, how exactly? And what are the things that affect this thing?

Let’s find out.

So, before we enter the core, we will look around in its origin story and will try to have a basic understanding of what it is.

Job opportunity: an understanding of its origin and creation

Look, the job thing didn’t exist throughout the history of civilization, so yeah “job” is a pretty new thing. But, that surely doesn’t mean that people didn’t work collectively to accomplish some achievements that they singly never could. We witness the great pyramid of Giza, we witness the Stonehenge and all those constructions are carrying evidence of collective work since their construction thousands of years ago. Alongside being the wonders of the world to today’s people, they stood as a symbol of slavery and exploitation and violation of any labor laws present today to the people who built those structures. And another class of that contemporary society saw it as a symbol of power and higher status. And hence to maintain their status they did make another class of that same society their slave in exchange for just enough to let them live and work.

Now, that was slavery. That was not the only example of people working collectively, although those are examples of slavery. There are examples of collective work to achieve something big without being slaved, like hunting down the mammoths by forming groups, building canal systems for better flood management and irrigation. But these are closer to volunteering than a job.

Now, there came the renaissance, yes it was Europe’s internal matter but it didn’t stop there and just spread across the globe and the slavery thing became something bad to consider. But at the same time workmanship was welcomed, so the world didn’t run short of workers and not slaves.

Although the renaissance pointed to slavery as a bad thing, it couldn’t stop this practice, because of some newly arose issues due to the renaissance like colonization. And slavery did exist for roughly another couple century or more.

This workmanship fed the hunger for workers for construction works and artists designed that construct until the late 19th century.

The late 19th century, the industrial revolution was on track. And probably at this point of time, the job thing gets its life, and with it the job opportunity. 

With industries in control, it was the first time in human history that people were working together not to build but to produce something other than agricultural products. With this huge workforce, the rapid production of products and services became a reality.

Trends in Job opportunity over time and factors affecting it

With the setup of the industrial revolution, there generated a huge demand for those workers who will be able to maintain and operate those huge setups and will be able to fetch the maximum from those huge setups. And alongside that rise in employment opportunities in higher rank there arose another huge demand for general labor who will be the frontline of production. And this way the employment or job opportunities just skyrocketed. 

It would have been a great story if it had ended there, but it didn’t.

Because of the high demand for jobs, most people got work to do in return for a reasonable payment. With the money in hand, the lifestyle got drastically changed, people were expecting a higher age and healthier life. By healthy means a sharp decrease in infant and maternal mortality rate, and this particular thing caused the population to see the first boom in the entire history of the human race.

 And this boom indicated a good supply source of more workers and, more workers mean more people who can do the same thing and that was the moment when factories turned themselves into sweatshops. Because now a worker is easily replaceable with someone from that huge population. So assuming that time is now, if you protest against the conditions of working you will mostly receive a firing letter rather than better working conditions.

So yeah, the job opportunity escalated, but not the working conditions.

But, then changed the time and once again factories get saturated with their existing workers and hence cut-out the job opportunity they were providing, because of the imbalance in the expected profit-loss calculation. This depletion in job opportunity has fluctuated over time with the rise or peak at industrial revolutions and decreasing then after saturation of the industries.

This advent of industrial revolutions isn’t the only thing that affects job opportunities. There are countless direct and indirect factors included in deciding the rise or fall in job opportunities, some of these parameters are even unpredictable like weather, epidemic, and other environmental factors. And sometimes these parameters project a cycle of rising and dipping job opportunities with climatic conditions around the year. 

This has continued various times and this fluctuation in job opportunity is not the thing to worry about; it is the amount of the rise or height of the peak of job opportunity projected with respective industrial revolutions.

The trend to worry about

Recently, the employment opportunity has headed toward hell. Although it is mostly credited to the pandemic. But, when you compare the job opportunities projected by the current industrial revolution with the previous one of 1969, you will find a huge difference in the number of job opportunities they project, this is also dependent on the type of technology that is causing this revolution and the period between the successive revolutions.

The best way to compare will be to compare the projected employment opportunities by the industrial sector that brings in the revolution. So, while comparing the previous and present industrial revolutions, we can safely consider the giants of the respective industries as the candidate for accounting for the employment opportunity those revolutions projected.

Here, we will choose Google and Ford as the candidates, because they are the giants in their respective industries, and also those industries represent a revolution each.

So, in the 1970s, at the peak of the third industrial revolution, Ford Motors employed around 364 thousand employees, but Google in a similar position today offers only around 135 thousand jobs. That difference is caused by the difference in industrial sectors mostly. Being relied on automation Google needs a lesser number of physical employees to maintain the

Fig.: Number of employees at Ford Motors worldwide over years (2006-2020) :: Source: macrotrends

service as smooth as the other one in its time. This whole thing is possible due to an inevitable change in the workforce, switching from man to machine. And this change in the workforce is not only confined to Info Giants, this same thing can also be observed in companies like Ford. automation and machine learning allowed Ford motors to decrease the number of physical workers, i.e. from 300 thousand in 2006 to only 186 thousand in 2020. That’s the cost of automation. But it is the payable one as this way companies will get what they look for, the profit.

So, this inevitable piece of technology is causing a change in the workforce which may cause you to lose your job, and the company you are working in simply does not care.

Conclusion

A lot has changed in the past 50 years, the world has experienced an industrial revolution and is witnessing one right now, and yes, those revolutions too have changed. 

The revolutions have changed in their nature and this thing is bringing a change in its workforce too. And this change is no good for those who are solely dependent on jobs. Although it is at the same time generating a lot of new opportunities. But while balancing both sides with lost opportunities feels heavier, as of now. And this trend is something to really worry about.

Automation is going to cause unemployment, and we need to prepare for it.
-Mark Cuban