[kublikhan]

That the Japanese are making the transition in a peaceful, if not graceful manner, without resorting to immigration is a good thing. If nothing else we should watch and observe how they do it, what works, what doesn’t.

In the USA we lament mechanization and robotics and AI that threatens to take away all employment. Then whey are we lamenting there won’t be enough folks to care for the elderly? It seems each elederly person creates at least 2 to 3 jobs. The bigger problem is what to do with all the extra health care workers once the elderly are all dead?

You want to know how the Japanese care for their elderly? Prisons. Many of the elderly in Japan are intentionally getting caught committing crimes so they can go to prison. Many prisons are turning into defacto retirement homes. Does this sound like a good solution to you?

In record numbers, elderly people in Japan are committing petty crimes so they can spend the rest of their days in prison. The elderly crime rate has quadrupled over the past couple of decades. In prisons, one out of every five inmates is a senior citizen.

The unusual phenomenon stems from the difficulties of caring for the country's elderly population. The number of Japanese seniors living alone increased by 600% between 1985 and 2015. For these seniors, a life in jail is better than the alternative. It costs more than $20,000 a year to keep an inmate in jail, according to Bloomberg, and elderly inmates drive that cost even higher with special care and medical needs. Prison staff members are increasingly finding themselves preforming the duties of a nursing home attendant.

The scale of Japan's problem is alarming authorities. The government is trying to combat its senior crime problem by improving its welfare system and social services program but the wave of senior criminals doesn't appear to be ending any time soon.

Elderly people in Japan are getting arrested on purpose because they want to go to prison

[Newfie]

Well here in the USA it is the mentally challenged that find themselves in prision, prisions are turning into mental hospitals.

Neither one sounds a particularly good solution.

But thanks for the info, I had not known that.

[KaiserJeep]

To be brutally frank, this is one of the downsides to education for women, and modern reproductive services. Many couples choose to be DINKs (double income no kids). It is happening throughout the Western World.

It's good in the sense that human population growth needs to stop and reverse, or we're all toast. It's bad because the overpopulated Third World is sending a growing supply of refugees in the direction of the First World.

Says me, who it turns out has so far enriched about a half dozen possibly illegal Hondurans while remodeling and landscaping my home, in preparation for the sale.

[Newfie]

AI guru predicts 40% of jobs go away because of AI.

Teach all those folks how to be elder care givers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes ... elligence/

[kublikhan]

AI gut was 40% of jobs go away because of AI.

Teach all those folks how to be elder care givers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes ... elligence/

These are low pay high stress jobs that many do not want. You know what segment of the population does flock to these jobs? Immigrants. So if you shut immigrants out of the country you are going to shut out a lot of the very labor force for elder care givers.

Approximately 1 million of the current caregiver workers in the U.S. are immigrants, according to the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute. This amounts to approximately one-quarter of the U.S. nursing, psychiatric, home health and personal care aides.

Despite the increase in job availability in this sector, nursing homes and agencies providing home health aides services struggle to provide sufficient staff to meet their patients’ needs. Across the country, patients with disabilities and the elderly who receive home health services in remote areas have gone without services in recent years, as agencies providing home health aides have reported staff shortages of up to 30 percent. Nursing homes in Wisconsin and Minnesota have been forced to turn away thousands of patients in recent years because they lack sufficient staff.

The reason for the acute shortage in the industry is simple: jobs like CNAs, personal care attendants, caregivers or home health aides are severely underpaid – on average about $10-11.00/hour – due largely to low reimbursement rates from the government programs that pay for the care provided to those in need. Their work – assisting the elderly, convalescents, mentally impaired or persons with disabilities with daily living activities – is physically and emotionally taxing. Workers often suffer injuries due to work-related accidents and even violent attacks. BLS estimates that the incidence rate of occupational injuries and illness among nursing assistants is the second highest, being surpassed only by the incidence rate of occupational injuries among police officers.

The employee shortage in the industry is about to get worse, as thousands of caregivers will have to leave their jobs when their work authorization in the U.S. is terminated. Throughout 2017 and 2018, the federal government announced it would terminate several immigration programs that provide employment authorization to foreign nationals who are currently in the U.S. A considerable number of these immigrants currently fill personal care aide jobs. The majority of the nursing homes and agencies providing home health services nationwide already employ immigrant workers, some with TPS and DACA-based employment authorization. Terminating these immigration programs will potentially leave long-term care facilities severely understaffed, in an industry where the U.S. worker turnover is already high.

Caregiver Industry Braces for Workers Shortage as Thousands Lose Employment Authorization in the U.S.

'Crisis mode': As boomers age, a shortage of caregivers

The US can't keep up with demand for health aides, nurses and doctors

Not to mention this doesn't address who is going to pay for all of this. When you have a large working age segment of the population the pension burden of the aged section of the population is light as a small number of retirees are drawing pensions spread over a larger number of working age paying into the system. When this flips to a large numbers of retirees drawing pensions spread over a small number of working age paying into the system you are going to have a problem.

We do, however, face with certainty another population problem that will be at hand very soon-a rapidly aging population. This article focuses on one implication of this problem-namely, the consequences of an aging population for government pension systems, such as the U.S. Social Security system, that rely on taxes paid by current workers to fund payments to retirees. The strain on such systems will grow as the number of persons receiving benefits increases relative to those in the labor force and paying taxes.

A Graying Population
The graying of the population poses a serious fiscal problem as the dependency ratio-that is, the ratio of persons out of the labor force to the number of persons in the labor force-rises. Government pension systems-Social Security in the United States-are where a rising dependency ratio has its most obvious impact. Social Security, like the public systems of most countries, is a pay-as-you-go system, meaning that taxes paid by current workers are used to fund payments to today's benefit recipients, rather than invested in accounts or otherwise set aside to finance the benefits of those currently paying taxes when they retire.

To be sure, under current law, one's Social Security benefits are related to the taxes he or she paid while working, but that link relies on the ability of government to levy taxes on one generation of workers to finance benefits promised to another generation. Obviously, as the number of persons receiving benefits rises relative to the number paying taxes, the average taxpayer must shoulder a larger and larger burden or, alternatively, benefits must be cut.

One way to think about Social Security taxes today is that they are like the food grown by frontier farmers that they do not get to consume because the food goes to their parents and children- their dependents. Some of the income earned by those working today has to be diverted to provide benefits for retired dependents. The burden will rise substantially in coming years because the number of retirees will rise relative to those at work.

Projections by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicate that public transfers to retired persons for pensions and health care will increase in the average OECD country by some 6 percentage points of GDP, from 21 percent to 27 percent, between now and 2050.2 Unless promised future benefits are cut significantly, substantial tax increases will be necessary to effect such transfers. However, as a recent OECD report concludes, drastic tax increases could make matters worse by reducing the incentives for market work and for saving.3 The OECD concludes that in many countries it may be necessary both to reduce promised benefits and to increase the incentives for work.

In recent decades, there has been a tendency for people to enter the labor force at a higher age while retiring at an earlier age. Consequently, the proportion of life spent working has declined. This phenomenon reflects a number of factors, including increasing returns to education and increasingly generous transfer programs that encourage early retirement. In countries that experienced a post-World War II baby boom, large increases in the labor force in the 1960s and 1970s reduced the dependency ratio and enabled increasingly generous transfer payments to retired persons. However, if life expectancy continues to increase, as demographers project, the dependency ratio will rise and such transfers will constitute an increasing burden on those working.

This discussion should make clear that the fundamental problem our society-and all aging societies-faces is one of an increasing number of retired people relative to working people. To avoid substantial tax increases on future workers, some combination of only two possible solutions must be chosen. One is to reduce the annual payments to Social Security beneficiaries, and the other is to reduce the number of retirement years by raising the retirement age.

The Real Population Problem: Too Few Working, Too Many Retired

[Ibon]

The Japanese already have toilets that wipe and warm and dry your ass, their robotics will soon be changing the Depends diapers of the aged, sing them Japanese folk song lullaby's and tuck them in at night.

[Newfie]

Kub,

If we bring in more folks to do the health care then who is going to pay for the care of the workers displaced by AI?

Once I had an employee whine to me that his job was no fun. My response? “No shit Sherlock, that’s why we pay you, it’s no fun. You want fun? Pay your bucks to stand in line at Disneyland.” That’s why I never went higher up in management, I’d open my mouth and the truth would fall out.

That’s part of the cultural change we need to go through. Pretty? No! Necessary? Absolutely!

Years later, after I had moved on, that same fellow, who had replaced me at that job, told me. “Back then I didn’t know what you were talking about but I do now and you were right.” Unsolicited.

Having a job is a privilege. Besides being financially compensated it allows you to contribute to society, to be a useful member of your culture. You should be appropriately compensated and treated fairly, but never forget you are replaceable.

[ralfy]

What most forget is that employees are also customers.

[kublikhan]

Newfie, it sounds like you are white washing some of the real problems I described in this industry as nothing more than whining about work. I am talking here about an industry that has higher rates of injuries and illness than any other job besides being a cop. And an occupation that is highly vulnerable to violence and sexual assault.

[25 percent of Danish home care, social work and health sectors reported experiencing sexual harassment on the job in the last year. That's far higher than the national average of 2 percent. 27.6 percent of U.S. home care workers reported that they had experienced sexual harassment during the course of their work.]

HOW DO YOU RESPOND WHEN THE HARASSER IS AN ELDERLY PATIENT?

The demand for home care workers — also known as the “direct care” workforce — is expected to increase dramatically in coming years. Sadly, the dismal combination of low wages, inconsistent work schedules and poor advancement prospects will make it extremely hard to fill the projected home care positions. In fact, the shortage of professional caregivers may well be even worse than you — and experts — think.

Pay and Benefits for Home Care Workers
To understand the problem, it helps to understand current conditions. The home care industry is losing workers to big box retailers, fast food restaurants and similar businesses paying higher wages. The median hourly rate for home care workers is a measly $10.66 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about what a short-order cook makes and it’s two-thirds of the hourly earnings of veterinarian technicians, notes Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban Institute think-tank and an authority on long-term care. “In other words, we pay people $5-an-hour more to care for our cats than to care for our mothers.”

Worse, the industry has high rates of on-the-job injuries (higher than mining and oil and gas extraction) and there is a high risk of sexual harassment and assault for its primarily female workforce. Little surprise that The National Domestic Workers Alliance has called for a #MeToo Day of Action for domestic workers including home care workers.

It’s easy to see why annual turnover rates at home care agencies are around 60%. Gurgone and her colleague Hayley Gleason at the Home Aide Care Council presented this telling statistic at the Aging in America conference: Home care agencies in Massachusetts hire 18 people every three months, on average, but they lose 15 workers over the same time period. “My reaction was: ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’

Why Things Could Get Even Worse
And yet the job market for home care workers may well deteriorate even more.

One reason: The Trump administration’s plans to restrict legal immigration to the United States. About one-in-four workers at nursing homes, assisted living facilities and home care agencies are immigrants.

Another: local independent home care agencies are closing up as their owners retire. ICA Group researchers say that recently, for every agency with 20 to 100 employees in business at least 25 years that has been sold, nine closed their doors.

The Shortage Of Home Care Workers: Worse Than You Think

Recruiting adequate numbers of home care workers to fill these jobs is becoming increasingly difficult, as evidenced by continual reports of workforce shortages. One reason for the shortages is the poor quality of home care jobs: wages are low and access to employer-provided benefits is rare. With a median hourly wage of $10.11 and work that is often part time or part year, home care workers earn on average $13,300 annually. As a result, one in four home care workers lives below the federal poverty line (FPL) and over half rely on some form of public assistance.

• About 9 in 10 home care workers are women
• Home care worker wages have not kept up with inflation over the past 10 years:
inflation-adjusted wages remained relatively stagnant, decreasing from $10.21 in 2005 to $10.11 in 2015.
• Labor force participation among women ages 25 to 64, who currently make up 73 percent of the home care workforce, will increase by only 2 million in the next decade, compared to 6.3 million in the previous decade. This means that despite the growth in demand for home care workers, the pool of likely applicants will be considerably smaller from 2014 to 2024 than in the previous decade.

U.S. HOME CARE WORKERS

This audio file ends on a bleak note. Because of the labor crisis in this industry they were predicting more deaths from neglect:
There's A Looming Home Health Care Worker Shortage

Putting all of this together:
We have a worker who just lost a job paying good money because of automation/AI. Now you are asking them to take a job paying 13-14k a year wiping peoples' asses. This job also has lots of physical and emotional stress, and carries a high risk of injury, illness, and sexual assault. Do you really think this is going to happen Newfie?

[Newfie]

Kub,

I’m no friend of the current home health care system. I hear everything you are saying and agree it’s a major problem. It’s on reason we now have an expensive elder care insurance package. Yes, as you say, it will be a problem.

The alternative is to have that laid off worker making $0/year. So how is that going to work? We have $13k/year (using your $) for elder care and to support that unemployed worker. Do we now use that same $13k to take care of the elderly, the unemployed worker and an immigrant?

What I’m advocating is that we plan for the transition. We socially elevate the position of the elder care worker, give them training and status. Start thinking about what’s wrong with the current system (plenty) and fixing it.

Do I think this will happen? No, because of our capitalist/consumerist culture. There’s no money in it taking care of people. Look at what a Masters Degree in Social Work pays. $13k. But these changes will be forced upon us none the less.

[kublikhan]

The alternative is to have that laid off worker making $0/year. So how is that going to work? We have $13k/year (using your $) for elder care and to support that unemployed worker. Do we now use that same $13k to take care of the elderly, the unemployed worker and an immigrant?

Newfie, you are creating a false binary choice here of take an elder care job or remain unemployed. The real world doesn't work like that. Yes, change including automation and AI causes job losses. But change also creates new jobs. And not just in the elder care sector. Other sectors of the economy are growing jobs as well. Here is a list of the top ten sectors expecting job growth over the coming decade:

Which industries are expected to thrive and grow the most over the next decade? Technology, unsurprisingly, comes out on top. "Technology is at the heart of nearly everything we do and experience these days." Tech companies outperformed other industries "across the board." "A decade ago, tech investors mainly invested money in communication tools, social networks, and software as a service. Now, the universe of companies that call themselves technology companies has grown tremendously." Health and energy place second and third in the ranking, respectively.

If you're planning to start a new business, or to join one that's expected to flourish, here are the top 10 booming industries.

10. Transportation
9. Real estate
8. Finance
7. Hospitality
6. Construction
5. Consumer retail
4. Media
3. Energy
2. Health
1. Technology

Career decision coming up? The Top 10 industries that are adding jobs and thriving

What I’m advocating is that we plan for the transition. We socially elevate the position of the elder care worker, give them training and status. Start thinking about what’s wrong with the current system (plenty) and fixing it.

Do I think this will happen? No, because of our capitalist/consumerist culture. There’s no money in it taking care of people. Look at what a Masters Degree in Social Work pays. $13k. But these changes will be forced upon us none the less.

How exactly will these changes be forced on us? In Japan, the elderly are being sent to prisons. In the US, conditions in nursing homes are projected to go from bad to worse in the coming decades. Doesn't exactly sound like an elevation of elder care to me.

Our elderly population is growing – by 2030, one in five Americans will be at least 65 years old. One of the most pressing problems with this is the lack of doctors training to be geriatricians, or doctors who specialize in treating the elderly. The next generation of senior citizens (meaning the baby boomer generation) will be sicker than those before it. The Foundation estimates 55% more senior citizens will have diabetes, 25% more will be obese, and the next generation will be 9% less likely to claim they’re in good health. But fewer and fewer doctors are training to be geriatricians. Even our current workforce is not properly trained to deal with elderly patients, including physical therapists and psychologists.

The Future of Nursing Homes As A Business
The elderly need specialized care so they can live happy, productive and full lives. If they’re unable to get the treatments they need, they quickly fall to sickness, immobility, and dementia. Seniors will be forced to live in nursing homes to gain access to trained nursing and medical care. Unless something drastically changes in the industry, these facilities will not be equipped to care for the aging population properly and safely. The quality, funding, and capacity simply isn’t there.

Overworked, improperly trained staff are more likely to overmedicate residents that they don’t know how to deal with. Two-thirds of residents receive psychoactive medications. In fact, over-use of antipsychotic drugs like Seroquel is so rampant, governments and legislatures have had to take action. Giving residents medications they don’t need to control their behavior is called chemical restraint. Nursing assistants provide most of the care in nursing homes, but their training is minimal. If a staff member misinterprets a resident's behavior as aggressive, or if they just don't have enough time to provide the care a resident needs, they often turn to powerful drugs to sedate them. This is especially true for residents with dementia.

How the Doctor Shortage Affects Nursing Home Residents

The nursing shortage in the United States adds to the growing problem of how to provide appropriate care for senior citizens who need nursing home services. Nursing homes have lost funding in recent years; in addition, more and more senior citizens are in need of nursing home services. Thus, experts predict that by the year 2050, there will be 18,000 more seniors who need nursing home care than there will be beds to house them.

Cuts in Reimbursement
Since most seniors rely on Medicare and Medicaid to help them pay for nursing home care, cuts in these programs significantly affect how many people can afford nursing care. In 2011, the federal government cut reimbursement to nursing homes from Medicare by 11 percent. Nursing homes tend to lose money on Medicaid patients, as Medicaid doesn’t pay for the entire cost of the patient’s treatment. However, it is illegal for Medicaid certified homes to turn any patient away who is on Medicaid and/or no longer has enough financial resources to pay for care. As a result, nursing homes don’t have the money they need to keep themselves open and provide appropriate care to all patients.

The main consequence of these problems is that many nursing homes have had to cut staff, and more cuts are expected in the future. Nursing homes simply cannot afford to pay for all of the staff they need to stay open because of lack of funding and their patients’ inability to pay for nursing home care themselves. As a result, nursing homes tend to be understaffed, and this problem is going to get worse over time.

While nursing homes are struggling to admit patients and care for them properly, the number of patients that need nursing home care services is steadily increasing. People are living longer–it’s not uncommon for people to live into their 90s or even reach 100 years of age–and the baby boom generation is reaching retirement age. According to MSN Money, by 2030, 20 percent of the US population will be over 65, and the number of 85-year-olds and 100-year-olds will double or triple. Many of these people will need nursing care services.

Nursing homes will need more funding in order to keep up with these changes in demographics. If funding continues to decline, there will be less nursing homes available to take care of the number of patients needing nursing care services, and those homes that are open will not be able to hire enough staff to take care of the patients.

Nursing Shortage: What the Future Holds for Nursing Homes

[Newfie]

10. Transportation
9. Real estate
8. Finance
7. Hospitality
6. Construction
5. Consumer retail
4. Media
3. Energy
2. Health
1. Technology

Not according to the AI expert. A lot of those jobs you list are exactly the kinds of repetitive jobs to be replaced by AI. In fact he mentioned transportation as dead meat. Consumer retail is widely know as a dead end because of online sales. Sears vs Amazon. So I don’t think that’s a very good list.

And #2 is health. That I agree with.

And ALL of these are service sector jobs with the possible exception of technology, which is so broad as to almost anything, but probably AI related.

If we do end up with a tight immigration plan the population will likely remain flat or slightly decrease. That is a very good thing indeed. It will also mean an aging population. That is something that needs to be dealt with along with a whole bunch of other stuff.

[kublikhan]

Not according to the AI expert. A lot of those jobs you list are exactly the kinds of repetitive jobs to be replaced by AI. In fact he mentioned transportation as dead meat. Consumer retail is widely know as a dead end because of online sales. Sears vs Amazon. So I don’t think that’s a very good list.

And #2 is health. That I agree with.

And ALL of these are service sector jobs with the possible exception of technology, which is so broad as to almost anything, but probably AI related.

If we do end up with a tight immigration plan the population will likely remain flat or slightly decrease. That is a very good thing indeed. It will also mean an aging population. That is something that needs to be dealt with along with a whole bunch of other stuff.

Read what he said carefully. He said 40 percent of jobs were "displaceable". Not that they will be displaced. Meaning there is the possibility for automation to replace them. Doesn't mean it will actually happen. There is a big gap between theoretical and reality. He also said new jobs would be created to replace the jobs that are lost.

Scott Pelley: Forty percent of the jobs in the world will be displaced by technology?
Kai-Fu Lee: I would say displaceable.

Facial and emotional recognition; how one man is advancing artificial intelligence

As AI is used more often in workplaces, new jobs will become necessary to monitor and coordinate machines and robots.
"The invention of the steam engine, the sewing machine, electricity, have all displaced jobs. And we've gotten over it."
Still, even as AI gets better and better at completing tasks for humans, robots will not be able to fully replace humans any time soon, says Lee.

'Oracle of A.I.': These kinds of jobs will not be replaced by robots

Here's an example of one of those jobs that could theoretically be replaced by machines. However some practical problems with the technology have resulted in many rolling back the technology and doing things the old fashioned way:

Walmart has given up replacing store cashiers with machines. The retail giant is getting rid of “Mobile Scan & Go” technology, which allowed customers to ring up their own purchases. Apparently, the technology didn’t work for Walmart's customers. "It took Walmart almost a year to figure out what the rest of us already know: you can't convince customers to do the job of a cashier just because you don't want to pay for the work, especially when eliminating cashiers doesn't result in more convenient shopping.” Meanwhile, the new technology hasn’t helped Walmart’s operating margins. And it might have added to the retail giant’s customer satisfaction problem, which remains at record low levels recently. Walmart’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) score dropped a notch in 2017 from 2016 (from 72 to 71), placing the retail giant at the bottom of the list of department and discount retailers ranked, and a couple of notches below Sears. And bringing store cashiers back may help the situation.

Walmart Gives Up Replacing Store Cashiers With Machines

Is it the end of the line for self-checkout? It is for some Jewel-Osco customers. The Itasca-based grocer, which is under new ownership from an investment group led by Cerberus Capital Management, is in the process of removing self-checkout lanes from some of its local stores.

Jewel-Osco, which also recently eliminated its Preferred Customer loyalty cards, plans to instead hire more cashiers and add shorter express lanes, said Sperling. "We are creating an environment to better connect with our customers and give them more personalized service, one on one," Sperling said. "We think that our shoppers will be happy with our improved service."

The move is part of a growing trend nationwide among some large retailers that are returning to the human touch, despite the extra labor costs. Also, technology glitches, restrictions on purchasing liquor and other controlled products, and a higher rate of theft are contributing to the decline of self-checkout at retailers nationwide. "We have set a higher bar for customer service in our stores this year, and we feel that letting a customer come in, shop and leave without any opportunity for that last interaction at the check stand isn't reflective of the culture we're establishing."

While the equipment helps to reduce labor costs, it can stress employees who are staffing four to six self-checkout lanes when problems or interruptions occur, experts said. Whenever alcohol is sold, an employee over age 21 still is required to scan it due to age limitations on the purchase. Also, if there is a technology glitch, a coupon isn't accepted or a code is wrong, then a cashier still has to help the customer, experts said. Also, theft increased at self-checkout lanes and some stores tried random checks of customer orders after they completed their transactions. "The chance of catching someone randomly was rare and the chance of upsetting a good customer was high, because they'll feel like they were called out. There was just no good way to handle that."

Most of all, people enjoy talking with someone in the store. The self-checkout system just doesn't provide that connection. "They've lost that contact, which is part of the whole shopping experience. It almost was like shopping online."

Jewel-Osco getting rid of self-checkout lanes

[Newfie]

If AI create as many jobs as it displaces what is the point?

We already have an in/under employment problem.

All I’m saying is we should start transitioning folks into elder care professions.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

[KaiserJeep]

AI's and robots provide approximately 2-3 jobs for every 10 displaced, according to estimates found in IEEE Transactions on Robotics. The 10 jobs displaced break down as 8 low skilled blue collar and 2 medium skilled. The 2-3 new jobs are highly technical and all require extra education and years of experience as a journeyman.

The further bad news is that many existing jobs already have been automated. They will be lost in the next capital equipment renewal cycle at that manufacturing facility or business. Capital equipment typically gets renewed on a 20-40 year cycle depending on the nature of the business.

Most people are in denial of reality about this. Many many even most new jobs depend upon good preparation in the STEM curricula, even if the parents of such workers were conventional blue collar folks. So much for your idea that you don't have to make your kid do homework or pay for college, else they will turn 40 still living in your basement.

[kublikhan]

Kai-Fu Lee was talking about those 2-3 jobs created. I was speaking of the much broader job creation in the general economy:

Payroll employment rose by 2.6 million in 2018, compared with a gain of 2.2 million in 2017. Job gains have averaged 254,000 per month over the last 3 months.

Professional and business services added 583,000 jobs in 2018, outpacing the 458,000 jobs added in 2017.
Health care added 346,000 jobs in 2018, more than the gain of 284,000 jobs in 2017.
Manufacturing employment increased by 284,000 over the year. Manufacturing had added 207,000 jobs in 2017.
The construction industry added 280,000 jobs in 2018, compared with an increase of 250,000 in 2017.
Employment in food services and drinking places increased by 235,000 jobs, similar to the increase in 2017 (+261,000).
Retail trade employment increased by 92,000 in 2018, after little net change in 2017 (-29,000).

In December, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose 11 cents to $27.48. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 84 cents, or 3.2 percent.

Employment Situation Summary

[Newfie]

Kub,

KJ and I are talking about the future, not the past.

[Cog]

Robotics is not the end all that some people think it is. Yeah for certain sectors absolutely. Show me a robot that can take a water heater out of a house, install a new one, and then test the system to make sure it doesn't leak. Show me a robot that can dig a hole with a shovel, next to a fiber optic line, without cutting it. For repetitive tasks yes, robots can replace humans. But for anything that involves judgment, particularly in construction tasks, we aren't there and won't be for many years to come.

[Newfie]

The most prevelant mode of failure for fo lines is back hoe error. LOL

But yes, I agree. Which is why I was advocating for shifting our workforce towards elder care. Surely if we could close TSA and funnel that money into elder care we could provide a much greater benefit to the citizenry.

[KaiserJeep]

The human judgement part is easy. For example, 100 robots and 10 humans replace 100 truck drivers. Robots can already drive and unload trucks. For the exception tasks, a remote operator interacts with people on site, then controls the robot. Eventually as the software matures, the 10 people operating the 100 robots dwindles to 2-4 people.

Vehicle drivers is one example where the AI already exists, we only await the next vehicle replacement with a self-driving vehicle. Most driving jobs are already automated and will be lost as vehicles get replaced.

I have seen self-driving 18-wheeler big rig trucks on California highways already.