From the recent threads on automation, I’m wanting to compile a list of jobs that have been eliminated due to automation. Why? No reason, just think it’ll be fun. Now I’m talking about completely eliminated where it no longer exists.
The first one I can come up with is telephone operator. Like the one’s that used to connect wires to other wires.
I thought about projectionist, but according to Indeed evidently that’s still a job.
Theres not just the issues of jobs disappearing, there’s also the fact that one person can do the work of 3 people now due to automation.
There were 850k coal miners in the 1920s, there are barely 100k now. Coal production has doubled in that time from 600 million tons to 1200.
So we are able to mine 2x as much coal with 1/8 as many workers.
There are still coal miners, but far fewer. So the job wasn’t ‘eliminated’ but you need far fewer people.
Yes I get productivity improvements over time. But just trying to think of job eliminations, where the job doesn’t really exist anymore.
That might be tough. I haven’t talked to a telephone operator in a long time, but are they really all gone?
What about milking cows? Any commercial dairy must have an automated milking machine these days, but I suspect there are a few hobby farms, or self-sufficiency types who can still do it by hand.
Computers.
Not the machines. The people the machines were named after. There used to be people who made a living out of performing basic arithmetic. If you owned a business like a bank and needed to have a large number of sums added together, you hired a computer.
Bowling alley pin setters
I think this points to a useful distinction. I’m sure there are people who own a cow or two and milk them by hand. But I doubt there’s anyone who hires somebody to milk cows. At most, there may be some people who work as general farm hands who milk a cow as a part of their job.
There used to be people who milked cows for a living. But any dairy farm that’s producing enough milk nowadays to make it a full-time job is going to have automated milking. So while milking cows by hand still exists, the job of milking cows by hand has been eliminated.
Or what about home milk delivery? In old TV shows you see that people had someone bring milk to their home every morning, like the newspaper. Why did that stop? Because refrigerators became better? Or maybe just because milk production grew in scale so that there was no longer a market for that service? Whatever, it’s not that we now have machines delivering milk to your house.
I can think of many jobs that no longer exist, but usually it’s not because the job itself is now done by automated machines, but because whole systems of production have changed, and either those jobs are not efficient/necessary, or they’re no longer viable ways to earn a living. The relates to the article SuperAbe posted.
Photo developers/techs/whatever? As with hobby farming, I imagine some people still have a darkroom and jars of chemicals on hand to produce their own 8x10 glossies, but does anyone do it for a living anymore? You don’t take the film to the photo place anymore. You take your phone or USB stick to Walgreen’s and print it out yourself in a minute.
Airline navigators?
But this doesn’t apply to milking cows. That’s an example of people being replaced by machines. People used to milk cows manually. Now cows are milked by machines.
When I was at Intel in the mid-90s there was a whole bunch of people who drew the detailed circuits, laying them out to be as compact as possible. Five years later when I moved into the microprocessor group at Sun that job no longer existed, replaced by CAD tools.
There are still people who do the detailed layout of cells in a library, but these people didn’t do that.
The job of pumping gas might not be totally eliminated yet, given the one or two states that mandate it, but I haven’t seen one such person in all of California. So that isn’t exactly a job with a future.
They haven’t been automated away, though. The work is now done by the consumer instead, right? I mean, you could pump your own gas when the machines were totally analog. Along these lines are those self-checkout lines – that seems like it would be a better example, because the scanners take all the guesswork out of ringing up groceries, except that there are still plenty of register workers.
Leaffan had a good one with airline navigators – there used to always be three people in the cockpit. I think the last plane that needed that were older 747s, right?
How about typesetters? Does anyone actually lay out type anymore?
Travel agents: the job hasn’t been eliminated, but you can buy some packages online with little human intervention. If you’re just flying to see relatives somewhere, you likely can just buy the tickets online. (I had to call the airline once due to doing something stupid the first time I traveled by myself. There’s still support staff, but you will be on hold for a long time because the airline doesn’t need many support staff.)
Bank tellers - the position still exists, but far fewer are needed. The positions are somewhat sales-based now. There’s less need for tellers to do basic transactions when ATMs and online banking can handle most customer needs.
The job description of secretary has changed. Some old-time secretaries seemed to be scribes (typists). They had to learn to justify text by hand. Now computers do that automatically. Anyone can copy and paste text. The computer has a decent (but not perfect) spellchecker. Instead of distributing copies of memos, you have email. Modern day secretaries are more like personal assistants.
Actually, I’ve been doing all my travel arrangements online for quite some time - flights, hotels, resorts, hire cars and all. It seems like there’s no need for a travel agent anymore, it you’re the least bit internet savvy.
The railroads have dropped employment in all sectors. 70 years ago, the move from steam to diesel took a lot of labor out. Modern brakes have reduced the need for other men to ride along as brakemen. Today they are even using remote controlled switchers in yard situations.
Will the future bring crew-less trains? Probably. Eventually. Right now it’s an order of magnitude more difficult than the current driver-less big rigs on the highway. We’ll see.
Have brakemen been eliminated? Or just the necessity for them? I thought the union kept them employed aboard trains still. Or maybe I’m thinking of firemen.