The loss of occupations and identity in a jobless world
One year of unintended consequences
This week marks the one year anniversary of “unintended consequences” and its weekly footnoted articles focusing on technology, law, policy, transportation, environment and Native America or combinations of any of those. I am delighted you have been a part of this journey.
I want to celebrate this week by sharing the first article I published on May 25, 2022 with my first 8 subscribers. First, I checked to see if it was still relevant, and it seems it may be more relevant than ever, with the recent explosion in the widespread use of artificial intelligence. My subscriber’s list which started with 8 brave subscribers has grown to close to 400 readers each week, for which I am very grateful. I would like to ask that you join me in celebrating by sharing unintended consequences with a friend, this week.
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Now, a look back to one year ago this week.
An emerging technology has been defined as something you need today that you didn’t know you needed yesterday. That may be how you are feeling with ChatGPT or Jasper.ai, both recently released AI tools. This article from one year ago, will likely feel a bit closer to reality. Universities are still trying to understand how to respond and change given AI’s ubiqutous use —whether to ban it or embrace it. Businesses are rushing to capture its cost-saving possibilities and governments are inching forward with its use in policing and enforcement.
So here is our look back at one year ago, and the policy proposals for the coming wave of joblessness, but only in part, due to artificial intelligence.
A Brookings study in 2019 concluded that “[A]pproximately 25 percent of U.S. employment (36 million jobs in 2016) will face high exposure to automation in the coming decades (with greater than 70 percent of current task content at risk of substitution).”1 This is a clear signal that there will not be enough jobs to go around.
Andrew Wang, has a solution. Wang brought the idea of universal basic income (a monthly payment to everyone in America from the government) to the center of his platform in his run to be the Democrat Presidential nominee.2 These two dynamics set the stage to converge the loss of jobs with the proposal just to pay people to stay home. Add to this fire, the unexpected accelerate, the “Great Resignation of 2021” where the quit rate reached an all time high in November 2021.3
Andrew Wang’s proposal for a Universal Basic Income is a titilating concept for futurists who see no need for an advanced society to spend their days toiling away in jobs that artificial intelligence can do as good or better. Futurists imagine former workers will turn to art and the humanities, philanthropy and music with all this extra time.
Some have pointed to Finland where in 2017 they did the first and only trial of a UBI nationwide study among a sample of the population for two years.4 The object of the study was how it affected employment after the end of the trial. The conclusion was that it did not have much affect. But the experiment is hailed as a demonstration of how UBI can work, despite the outcome.
Like most political proposals, none of the unintended consequences are considered. Most of the work is focused on economics and how a government can afford to implement UBI, what the economics will be for GDP and other financial aspects of such a plan. Little to no work has been done on the psychological effect of losing an occupational identity.
We have to ask what will this void of meaningful occupations mean for humans?
The very first punishment was to work for your food until death, after the fall of man. Genesis 3:19 tells us, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” A grim reminder that we are being punished, but is work punishment? Those who have found work that is so enjoyable for them that it is not like work are truly fortunate (I count myself among those.). While not everyone is happy with their work, everyone has their identity tied to their work to some degree.
From the beginning of time occupations have been closely tied to identity, in fact, surnames that came about in Europe often identified a family by their occupation —- Baker, Cook, Smith, Archer, Barber, Carpenter, Farmer, Fisher, Forester, Shoemaker, Tanner, Weaver, Gardner to name just a few.5 So occupational identity is still attached to those families to this day. If we named people for their occupations today, we might have surnames like Programmer, Advisor, Consultant, Driver, Designer or Engineer. But whether we have official surnames or not, identity is connected to our professions and occupations.
Ironically, “Long COVID” may mean more than the lingering physical and mental effects on one’s health, but also the “long” after-effects of the pandemic on the future of work. Staying at home alone, with roommates or with one’s immediate family gave all of us humans time to reflect on job and life (among dozens of other things) and a significant number of people did not like what they saw. A Pew survey found that 35% of those who left their jobs in the Great Resignation cited “lack of respect” as the predominate reason for leaving.6 Negative identities connected to one’s job or occupation and realizing that you want to improve is a desireable human endeavor. The Great Resignation does not mean people do not want to work, but the poll tells us that probably at least 1/3 want a job with more respect.
So what do we know from science about the psychology of work? The last meaningful book on the psychology of occupations was published in 1956, which finds that “occupational choice may be taken as an indication of some aspects of self-image.”7 Scores of books have been published since on how to chose an occupation, how to get ahead type books, all suitable for the time. Now it is time to develop a research agenda on how the looming lack of jobs, professions and occupations will impact a society that has grown around its members identity with occupations.
Let’s take a quick look at the science we do have on the negative effects of losing one’s job or occupation: A meta-analysis of ninteen studies on the relationship of work to suicide rates found that there is a distress effect as a result of job loss, and evidence that distress improves on regaining employment.8 In the U.S. a study showed that depressive symptoms were associated with job loss, but with one major mediating factor —-occupational status. With the disappearance of occupations, that mediating factor will disappear, which would increase the depressive effect found in these studies.9
Alcohol consumption increases with job loss,0 and drug overdoses increased significantly during the pandemic (but factors of isolation as well as job loss could also be attributable). One study showed that opiod deaths increased by 2.7% with the loss of 1,000 trade jobs.11 Other studies show that slow and incremental job loss has less of an effect on distress. But the same could be said for the proverbial frogs in the pot of water, oblivious to the fact that the water is imperceptably slowly being brought to a boil? The end result is not pretty for the frog.
Universities are the research centers for what lies ahead. Research also relates to what Universities teach. What will universities prepare you for? Likely not much will change except professional schools like engineering, medicine and law may be altered to reflect the new reality. Teaching basic human knowledge in the arts, humanities and science will be important to understand the world around us, just as it is today. Universities can still serve as the bridge to adulthood because the need for that will not change. With university tuition being free in the new world order, there is no pressure to select the right major to make the most money. But then what?
What happens to the graduates that are now prepared to understand the world around them, yet are prepared for no job? Were they taught how to select a life of music and art and philanthropy? Why would they not select a life of crime? A UBI cannot completely kill the entrepreneural spirit.
What is not to say that committing crimes will be what fills the void created by the lack of work? During the pandemic, crime decreased by 23% with the stay at home orders (except homocides and shootings), only to rebound with a venegence after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.12 It seems counter-intuitive that criminals who disobey criminal laws by definition, would be compliant with stay-at-home orders. So it bears exploring to do further research to discover why the drop in crime happened?
Graduates from universities and non-graduates will no longer have largely different life time expected incomes, so do universities eventually lose their importance for upward mobility and economic and social status? Almost inevitably.
What new identities will emerge if a UBI is the solution to joblessness? Wife, Husband, Mother, Father, Grandmother, Grandfather, Uncle and Aunt? What will come of the identity, “breadwinner(s)” for the family?
Using the Seven Generations principle, an indigenous way of looking at decisionmaking, we ask how will this policy affects seven generations. We look back at the previous three generations, our current generation and three future generations as we ask this question. We have looked back and work and occupation is indisputably tied to identity and self-worth. We look at today, and the convergence of artifical intelligence job replacement, political push to institute a universal basic income, and the pandemic effects that led to the Great Resignation, and all suggest we are at a turning point in human society. Looking ahead three generations are the decades ahead when this transition will take place. The next three generations are critical and this is the time when study and planning for such a transition might produce a better future, rather than throwing money at the future with a simplistic UBI that ignores the effect of identity and self-worth entangled with our occupations and professions.
Have we managed to become so advanced that we have escaped the first punishment to work for our food until death? Indicators are that a move to UBI will likely be more of a leap from the frying pan into the fire — perhaps a hellish outcome, if we do not give this serious study and thought before embarking on a utopian scheme lacking any scientific support.
1 https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2019.01_BrookingsMetro_Automation-AI_Report_Muro-Maxim-Whiton-FINAL-version.pdf
2 https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/08/08/universal-basic-income-gains-momentum-in-america?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gclid=CjwKCAjwp7eUBhBeEiwAZbHwkTkaZ_Gq_5zvygPApDbjtI2ZpfXSt400KO3OCsjdpdCTfwZr-RxZ8xoCtswQAvD_BwE
3 https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/09/majority-of-workers-who-quit-a-job-in-2021-cite-low-pay-no-opportunities-for-advancement-feeling-disrespected/#:~:text=The%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20set,20%2Dyear%20high%20last%20November.
4 “The findings were based on comparing the 2,000 unemployed participants who had received the €560 a month from January 2017 to December 2018 with a control group of 173,000 who did not. There was only a small statistical difference between the study group and the control group in the number of people who found work after two years.”
5 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_surnames_from_occupations
6 https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/09/majority-of-workers-who-quit-a-job-in-2021-cite-low-pay-no-opportunities-for-advancement-feeling-disrespected/#:~:text=The%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20set,20%2Dyear%20high%20last%20November.
7 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-17046-000 Anne Roe, “The Psychology of Occupations” (1956).
8 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879109000037
9 https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/43/5/1508/2949553?login=false
10 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irel.12019
11 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6606896/
12 https://econofact.org/crime-in-the-time-of-covid.
