# What jobs have been eliminated due to automation. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 13, 2019, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588 "2019-08-13T02:41:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/61 "2019-08-28T06:19:39Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Thats why we dont see cabooses anymore. Sure we do. I went to a motel where you got to sleep in cabooses. It was awesome. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/62 "2019-09-01T19:09:12Z")
> [@pullin](#): > > 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. The union contract just required them to be kept employed by the railroad. They didn’t have to shovel coal anymore, or even to ride on trains. So the railroad tried to find other jobs for them to do. Without displacing other union workers. In the 1990s, I worked for BN railroad, and they sent a bunch of former coal-shovelers to training for mainframe computer programmers. Didn’t turn out too well – those guys mostly didn’t have the aptitude for computer work at all! ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/63 "2019-09-01T20:58:11Z")
Pole dancing might be on the list. A club in France has brought in robot pole dancers, with mannequin parts for their bodies. [Video here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR_PtOim_8s) I think the human pole dancers don’t have to worry for a while yet. And lap dancing would be right out. Ouch! ---
**Author:** ![DummyGladHands](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/49beb7/32.png) [@DummyGladHands](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DummyGladHands)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/64 "2019-09-01T23:31:20Z")
Readers for a press clipping service. ---
**Author:** ![2ManyTacos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/3da27b/32.png) [@2ManyTacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2ManyTacos)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2019, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/65 "2019-09-02T20:25:05Z")
Cast members at Disneyland - and really at all theme parks - will never, ever be automated, even as a lot of actor-y jobs in general probably will be. I feel fairly comfortable in that prognostication. ---
**Author:** ![paulmarkj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@paulmarkj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paulmarkj)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2019, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/66 "2019-09-07T11:40:47Z")
Musicians - tea houses, bars, restaurants, dance halls. Furniture makers, printers, weavers, clothes manufacturing. Retail has lost jobs 14 years in a row. Car factories - and probably most other factories. Post office. Farmers. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2019, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/67 "2019-09-07T13:31:59Z")
Garbage men. Our town just switched over from miscellaneous cans to those wheeled bins. Each truck used to have a driver plus two men who picked up and emptied the cans, and now it’s just the driver. And I wouldn’t be surprised if each truck didn’t do a longer route now. So that’s got to be at least 2/3rds of their employees laid off. ---
**Author:** ![Bert\_Nobbins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@Bert\_Nobbins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bert_Nobbins)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/68 "2019-09-11T18:16:19Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > No more professional [Knocker-uppers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up) thanks to reliable alarm clocks. I think the main factor was that rising wages made alarm clocks\*\* affordable\*\* for the working classes. ---
**Author:** ![Bert\_Nobbins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@Bert\_Nobbins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bert_Nobbins)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/69 "2019-09-11T18:28:47Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > 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. In the analogue audio business PCB layout is still done by hand, as there are layout constraints that digital-focused auto-place and auto-routing software does not incorporate. It’s done on a computer of course, I don’t mean we’re still using black-tape-on-plastic. What has gone is the job of PCB assembler; I worked in a plant where 200 women (and they were always women) pushed components into PCBs. Almost all gone now. First there were auto-insertion machines that stuffed components into holes, now most stuff is surface-mount [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount\_technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology) and it’s even faster. Even before that, automated soldering [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave\_soldering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_soldering) had replaced women soldering each joint by hand. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/70 "2019-09-11T19:02:35Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > 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. I don’t know… that’s more of a situation where the job evolved due to technology. Draftsmen used to be almost along the lines of a technical artist, in that they’d make scale drawings in pencil and ink based on engineering and architectural layouts and plans. Nowadays, it’s all done in CAD software… by people still called draftsmen, or maybe CAD techs. And I’m still trying to figure out how automating a train would somehow be more difficult in a conceptual sense than a long-haul truck. The truck has to deal with both varying speed and direction in order to get where it’s going, avoid obstacles, and share the road with other vehicles. By comparison, an automated train’s concerns are much simpler-sounding the horn at the appropriate times, speeding up in the appropriate places, slowing down in the appropriate places and times, and identifying if something unusual is on the tracks- a cow or car for example. There’s no steering, navigation, sharing the road, obstacle avoidance, etc… There’s already a lot of automated rail in varying degrees, especially in the metro rail arena, as well as a lot of automated safety stuff regarding speed, etc… such as Positive Train Control. I predict we’ll see automated freight trains before we’ll see automated semi-trucks… ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/71 "2019-09-11T23:19:41Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > 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. > > [File:US Coal Mining Employment 1890-2014.png - Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Coal_Mining_Employment_1890-2014.png) > > 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. > > [Coal mining in the United States - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_coal_production.png) > > 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. However, the main reason the coal industry is dying is that natural gas is cheaper. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/72 "2019-09-11T23:22:24Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > 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? Did it? What about [Milkman Dan](https://www.redmeat.com/max-cannon/MeatLocker?topic=2131674)? ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/73 "2019-09-11T23:28:49Z")
> [@campp](#): > > 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. I think the main reason for decline in railway jobs is the decline of the railway industry as such. Airliners, automobiles, Greyhound buses, and long-distance tractor-trailer trucks have taken away a lot of its business. Likewise with streetcars – where they still exist, they’re preserved out of nostalgia (or newly built by visionary environmentalist officials) and are negligible compared to local bus transit, which is, after all, more flexible, as a bus can go anywhere the streets are paved and does not require fixed-guiderail infrastructure. Rail transit does, however, retain the advantage of being much more energy-efficient than rubber-wheeled alternatives. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/74 "2019-09-11T23:31:09Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I found [this](https://qz.com/932516/over-the-last-60-years-automation-has-totally-eliminated-just-one-us-occupation/) article that kind of explains the concept, and there is a helpful chart: Say, what ever did happen to boarding houses? I should think there would always be a demand for a place where you can rent a room **and** be served meals, all for one price. Like a bed and breakfast serving three meals instead of one. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/75 "2019-09-11T23:40:38Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > A few people have mentioned secretaries, but more obsolete than that is the role of secretarial pool typist. My mother was one of these: Her sole task was taking oral dictation or hand-written notes from various employees and typing up the results for correspondence or official records. I suppose it made sense back in the day when typewriters were unforgiving and unwieldy. Nowadays a similar role only exists in specific fields like medical transcription, and even then speech-to-text software can perform the task. I recently worked in a law firm for an attorney who used Dragon NaturallySpeaking. He never dictated anything I did not have to carefully edit. Speech-to-text still has a long ways to go. E.g., it has a very hard time distinguishing homophones, to say nothing of capitalization rules. ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/76 "2019-09-11T23:42:29Z")
> [@kirkrapine](#): > > Say, what ever did happen to boarding houses? I should think there would always be a demand for a place where you can rent a room **and** be served meals, all for one price. Like a bed and breakfast serving three meals instead of one. SROs, or single room occupancy buildings aka boarding houses have been made illegal in many North American cities. Ostensibly it was for safety concerns: boarding houses facilitated the spread of disease and many were firetraps. However, it’s not hard to imagine that real estate developers prefer to use that land for profitable condos instead, and that city residents who can vote (that is, people who aren’t homeless) might support legislation to get rid of their transient neighbors. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/77 "2019-09-11T23:44:13Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Public criers have been replaced by newssheets, which created (or rather boosted) the profession of public \*reader \*; but edumacation more or less took care of those beggars. Here in Tampa, Florida, back in the glory days of the local cigar industry (“Ceegar City” is still CB-radio slang for Tampa), every factory had a reader on the floor who read out newspapers and books, all day long, for the people rolling the cigars. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/78 "2019-09-11T23:53:22Z")
Perhaps a more interesting question would be, what jobs **cannot** be automated, short of the invention of Turing-test-capable strong artificial intelligence? (One of those things that, like nuclear fusion power plants, seems always to be ten years away.) I’m thinking lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, journalists, probably even accountants. And jobs requiring face-to-face customer service or hands-on work – a live waiter is part of any dining experience more elegant than fast food, and a massage chair cannot compare with a live massage therapist. And it will be a long time before prostitutes face serious competition from sexbots. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/79 "2019-09-11T23:54:01Z")
> [@kirkrapine](#): > > Say, what ever did happen to boarding houses? I should think there would always be a demand for a place where you can rent a room **and** be served meals, all for one price. Like a bed and breakfast serving three meals instead of one. A lot of cities _legislated_ them out of existence. Because they didn’t like the class of people who lived in them (mainly working class laborers minor clerks, etc. – often equated with winos or beer hounds), under the theory that removing the places where they live will make them disappear. Now those same cities are having a crisis of _affordable housing_, but the old regulations prevent creating new boarding houses. Other countries have many youth hostels, but our cities are filled with homeless youth. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2019, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588/80 "2019-09-11T23:56:57Z")
> [@kirkrapine](#): > > Here in Tampa, Florida, back in the glory days of the local cigar industry (“Ceegar City” is still CB-radio slang for Tampa), every factory had a reader on the floor who read out newspapers and books, all day long, for the people rolling the cigars. In Spanish, more often than not. Tampa’s Cuban community is much older than Miami’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-jobs-have-been-eliminated-due-to-automation/838588.md?page=5)