Who remembers a particular time when there was a conspiracy theory that, in the near future, robots will be taking over our jobs? Well, the future is now, and the robots seem hell-bent on taking no prisoners.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the Matrix.
Artificial intelligence is steadily replacing hundreds of jobs across the U.S. and worldwide, creating skepticism and uncertainty about the future of humanity. It is a scary development, as even the creator of AI has warned about the technology’s potential takeover.
The truth is that technological advancements have been overtaking jobs for centuries. From women who worked in the textile industry to switchboard operators in the 1970s, all the way through the 2000s when video streaming services took the place of physical video stores, technology has paved the way for mass production and is creating outrage among those who relied on those jobs. People are crying out in protest, including economist Maynard Keynes, who coined a phrase for the phenomenon in 1930.
Technological unemployment, he called it.
“From the sixteenth century, with a cumulative crescendo after the eighteenth, the great age of science and technical inventions began,” Keynes added, referencing the turn to other methods of mass production, which, he said, has been in “full flood” since the start of the 19th Century.
Now, if the complaints had started as far back as 1930, more than eighty years ago, we can only imagine how bad it must have gotten since then.
The fears of continued AI advancements are real, and the effect it is having on workers’ livelihoods cannot be understated. However, if the past shows anything, it is the resilience of humans and how capable they are of adapting.
That being said, here is a list of jobs that have been taken over by technological advancements:
The Textile Industry (1811)
Around the early 1800s, Luddite became a collective term for people who opposed technology and its advancements, as weavers and textile workers protested machines taking over their factory jobs. Lots of textile workers had spent years, some even decades, honing and perfecting their craft, only for cost-saving machinery to take over.
Gig Mills, a wool shearing machine, was capable of producing wool at a faster rate with only one person instead of several, and the stocking frame machine sped up the process of producing stockings to six times the rate as before.
Agriculture Jobs (1940)
Economist Maynard Keynes argued in the 1930s that technology was responsible for the economic downturn during The Great Depression. This was a time when labor-saving changes to jobs meant putting people out of work, such as with the introduction of the tractor.
The first tractor released in 1902 was too big and expensive for everyday farmers to get, but when Henry Ford produced the Fordson tractor in 1917, it saturated the market.
And as new technologies were introduced, from power lifts and rubber tires to diesel engines, the tractor became a major cog in agriculture. When it was first introduced, roughly one-third of Americans worked on farms. That number dropped to only 10% by 1950, according to The Atlantic, and by 2010, only 2% of the American workforce worked on farms.
Elevator Operators (1945)
Once upon a time, especially in the early 1900s, elevator operators were crucial in getting from one floor to the next in high-rise buildings. The elevators ran on a pully system, which needed a paid worker to guide the car manually to each stop. However, these old-school elevators were not the safest, as there was a gap between the floor and the car. This meant that if a person misjudged the distance and fell, the operator wouldn’t have time to stop.
To fix this problem, the elevator industry added safety bumpers and an automatic stopping feature, before finally inventing the driverless elevator. And while people were initially skeptical about it, everything changed in 1945 when the New York City elevator operators went on strike, costing the city $100 million in taxes and preventing 1.5 million office workers from getting to their jobs. This was the driverless elevators’ crowning moment as it replaced the hand-operated ones, effectively eliminating the position for good.
Automobile Workers (1950)
In the early 1950s, automobile manufacturers started using technology to speed up production and cut down on production costs. The automotive industry was most affected at the time, as it adopted robots to replace lower and middle-income workers who performed manual labor.
By introducing robotic technology into the automotive industry, employees were replaced by machines that could produce more for less, including welding jobs that paid $12 an hour. The replacement of technology meant that companies could effectively pay only $3.50 per hour while increasing output.
President John F. Kennedy was asked to address the growing issue of technology taking over jobs in 1960, but he voiced his support for the changes, saying the machines were “not created … so that they can destroy our prosperity and our economic health,” but instead said job seekers should work to transfer their skills.
A 2020 study by MIT professor Daron Acemoglu revealed that in the U.S., every robot added to the workforce per 1,000 workers resulted in a wage decline of .42%, while the employment-to-population ratio decreased by .2%. This equaled the loss of 400,000 jobs at the time.
Warehouse Workers (1960)
Although warehouse workers still exist today, the aspect of those who sorted the material goods has become obsolete today. Up until the 1960s, warehouses hired employees to sort each item as it enters a warehouse, but as technology exploded, those jobs were rendered unnecessary.
Electronic equipment took the place of human workers, which was ideal for production companies that wanted to save cost, but it put thousands of people out of jobs.
Switchboard Operators (1965)
Switchboard operators were once an integral part of the telephone communication line between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then, technology wasn’t advanced enough for people to directly dial a phone number and were instead greeted by a switchboard operator.
Although a replacement for human operators and switchboards was invented in 1892 – 16 years after Graham Bell patented the telephone, only about 300,000 out of 11 million telephone subscribers had automated service two decades later. This meant they no longer relied on operators.
Ironically, the Bell companies didn’t want an automated switching service, as only independent telephone companies used them. However, they realized the benefits of implementing an automatic switchboard after World War I, as wages for switchboard operators began to rise. The company started its plans to adopt the new system in 1919, but it wasn’t until 1965 that it implemented its first fully electronic switching system.
At the height of its demand, there were 342,000 switchboard operators; this declined to less than 250,000 in 1960 and dropped to only 40,000 by 1984. But today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are around 68,000 operators who still use switchboards to relay incoming, outgoing, and interoffice calls in the U.S.
Pinboys (1980s)
Up until the 80s, Pin boys were essential if you wanted to head to the local bowling alley for a night of friendly competition. Standing in the back of the alley, behind the pins and the bowling lane, they would wait to reset the pins and return the bowling ball to its owner.
However, by the late 1980s, they were replaced by automated pinsetters, leaving some people relieved as they claimed pin boys were “too often indolent, unreliable, and impertinent,”
Typesetter (1989)
Before the advent of digital printing, there were Linotype operators, or typesetters, who used the Linotype machine to print the written word. Introduced in 1884, the machine used hot metal blocks to imprint words on a page and was widely used in the 1970s to print newspapers and magazines.
Unlike hand-setting, where each letter, space, and number would be set by an operator individually, the Linotype used a keyboard of 107 keys, each marked with a capital or lowercase character, spaces, and numbers. The Linotype drastically sped up production, with a skilled operator producing up to 6,000 ems per hour, compared to hand-setting which only produced 250 ems per hour. The New York Tribune used the Linotype for two years before it became more widely known.
A photo of the machine was published in an 1889 article in Scientific American and was described as “the latest, and in many respects the most remarkable, of the numerous machines which inventors and mechanics have from time to time devised in their long-continued efforts to find some practical means by which to supersede or cut short the tedious work of typesetting.”
However, as digital printing took over, the need for typesetters dropped, allowing book publishers, newspapers, magazines, and more, to create short runs of their products while also cutting costs.
Packaging Workers (1990)
Packaging machines became popular in the early 90s as production companies searched for ways to once again cut down on costs.
A report by MIT in 2020 said its findings showed: “Industrial robots grew fourfold in the U.S. between 1993 and 2007 … to a rate of one robot per thousand workers.” The report added that Europe was slightly more advanced than the U.S., with the rate of industrial robots growing to 1.6 per thousand workers over the same time period.
The idea that tech jobs would be the wave of the future continued to grow in the 1990s, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicting in a 1992 academic journal that it would create 18 million jobs by the end of the decade.
Travel Agents (2001)
According to Travel Figures, the 9/11 tragedy was a turning point that changed how people travel. Airlines realized they could move online, using websites to update flyers, while online booking sites replaced the travelers’ need to pay an agent.
Over the next decade, the number of physical travel agencies dropped drastically, decreasing by 60% in 2015 since the early 1990s as people moved to social media and other apps like Airbnb, Priceline, and Booking.com.
The advent of Facebook forced another shift in the travel industry, as it introduced a new age of sharing which later included Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. This effectively reduced the number of in-person travel agents, forcing travel companies to move online.
A new 2023 report by Statista found that 72% of people prefer to book online, a significant contrast to just 12% who utilize travel agencies to book their trips. The report also says 53% of those booking online travel cited the speed and convenience of personally tailoring their schedules as the reason for using online sites, while 47% said it’s easier to compare prices and find the best deal.
Video Store Clerks (2010)
Video stores used to be an essential element of weekend movie nights, but have slowly gone out of business with the introduction of streaming services. And with it, the store clerks.
Blockbuster and other video stores eventually went bankrupt, eliminating thousands of jobs. At the height of its popularity, Blockbuster had more than 9,000 stores worldwide, but today only one remains in Bend, Oregon.
Blockbuster may have survived if it had bought Netflix when the streaming service was still just a startup. The company reportedly considered buying Netflix for $50 million, which equals to $88.3 million today.
