We Need to Invent Some New Jobs (And Quickly)

Novelists love to infuse their stories with long-ago curses that hover over the main characters' lives. So I'm fascinated by a real-world malediction that the British economist John Maynard Keynes inflicted on us back in 1930.

Keynes's biggest claim to fame, of course, is as a champion of massive government spending. He argued (correctly) during the Great Depression that government austerity programs were disastrous. As he saw it, the best hope of recovery lay in public-works programs that would get people employed again, even if big budget deficits ensued.

But Keynes wasn't always so upbeat. He also wrote a remarkable 1930 essay called "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," in which he peered far into the future to offer some guesses about how the labor market might be transformed a century from now. I've seen enough references to this essay lately that I decided to pull it out of the archives and give it a close read, Hi-Liter in hand. It's an eerie, prophetic bit of writing, which left me with the following impressions:

To Keynes's way of thinking, automation and technological progress would race so far ahead that human labor would become largely pointless. Machines could get almost everything done without us. Only the embers of a human work ethic would leave us scrambling for "small duties and tasks and routines" that might add up to a 15-hour work week. Other than that, we'd be on our own to find some ways of filling vast amounts of leisure time.

Are we there yet? As modern-day economists point out, part of this future has arrived. Add up the impact of factory robots, voice mail, expense-account software, self-driving cars, etc., and it's easy to see why a trio of researchers led by MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson recently declared that "machines are substituting for more types of human labor than ever before."

While the exact mechanics of Keynes's 15-hour workweek haven't caught on, the substance of his warning is directionally right. Millions of people in the U.S. and Europe lost jobs in the economic slump of 2007 to 2010 -- and a lot of them lack the skills or flexibility to get back into the labor market. So they sit, invisible and largely uncounted, as workforce dropouts.

For the brainiest people at the top, there's still plenty of high-paying work deciding what machines should do next. (Hello, software engineers, medical researchers and C-level executives.) And there's a surprising amount of low-wage work for people who can do simple but not-quite-repetitive manual tasks. As I point out in this Quora post, you won't find many robots trying to tidy up restaurants while food is being served. Watch what happens when a toddler crawls under a table, and you'll appreciate the unique skills of even a supposedly unskilled worker.

It's a bleak world, though, if middle-level jobs continue to dwindle. Speaking allegorically, what sort of society do we become if the people who can't make it as Google engineers are left to find work picking up dirty paper napkins at Arby's restaurants? Many policy makers are pushing for stepped-up science and engineering instruction in the schools, on the hope that a better-educated workforce will be able to create millions of new jobs at the top of the pyramid. That's a brave bet -- but I think there's an easier remedy available.

The more we automate, the more we come to appreciate the human touch in areas that machines don't handle well. Think of the companionship that customers find in a nail salon, a music festival or a cooking class. We'll pay extra for the chance to be with friends, to strike up new acquaintances and to feel appreciated in ways that go beyond a digitally rendered "badge" for our efforts.

Rummage through job boards, and you'll see an even more powerful way that the human touch is being put to use. There's a boom in what I'm calling "rapport jobs," in which people work long hours -- and are paid good money -- to make sure that different groups can work effectively together. Think about project managers, police/community liaisons, school-curriculum developers and the huge numbers of people who work as "systems integrators," making sure that some big new software package actually connects properly to all the other bits of IT infrastructure that it's supposed to embrace.

The more that we automate bits and pieces of our businesses, the more we need people to massage all the junctions where different algorithms don't actually talk to one another very well. Machines on their own can't decide whether the zoning commission should authorize a shopping mall or a public park -- because there isn't a clear formula to guide the way. Success entails the old-fashioned human skills of teamwork, empathy, trust and a willingness to draw out other people's hard-to-express preferences over a meal or extended debate.

As we create more semi-automated junctions in our world, the need for junction-minders actually goes up exponentially, not arithmetically. And as society evolves, we'll keep wanting to adjust the dials a bit more. That's the big change that Keynes didn't foresee. The connectors' jobs are gaining in importance all the time. The work these jobs entail will never be finished.

Such rising demands can't be satisfied with a few perfunctory hours of busy work. In fact, many of these jobs may entail much more than a 40-hour workweek. They are full-fledged callings: the exact opposite of watch-the-clock drudgery. Isn't that what we want, though? Instead of becoming extraneous, human effort becomes more exciting, more fulfilling -- and as essential as ever.

Keynes was right when he predicted that technology's rise would upend our attitudes about work. But he didn't realize how much our definition of work would change, too. The high-growth areas of the job market aren't going to be dominated by repetitive, unpleasant tasks. Instead, for a growing number of people, work will be the creative arena that brings nearly as much fulfillment and joy as any hobby.