Re:Global population is crashing, soaring and moving
by inglor_cz on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @03:47AM
(#31093935)
That gap is much smaller than it used to be.
At the peak of the muscle era, steelworks in my city of birth employed 100 000 people. Now they are down to fewer than 10 000, even though their production has actually grown.
Automation took those jobs away. It is not dissimilar to the collapse of the rural areas: once, almost everybody was a subsistence farmer. Now, 1 % of the population can feed the rest.
Re:Global population is crashing, soaring and moving
by mcntsh on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @05:08AM
(#31094386)
Automation is certainly a big thing, but we still need people to care for the elderly, drive buses, clean public spaces, paint buildings, work on roads, take garbage, deliver goods, and so on. Some societies, such as Japan, are banking on automation filling these gaps but the affects of low birth rates will be felt long before it can take over completely.
You said it yourself, the western worker goes into school to work non physical jobs, that means there's a big gap in the physical job part of the labor force that can be filled by immigrants.