These Skills Might Just Save Your Job From the Robots

Each day, we see panicked headlines predicting that robots will take all our jobs and people will be permanently unemployable. Even though humans have literally always adapted to technological changes throughout our history, the doomsayers insist that this time is different. While I don’t think humans will run out of productive things to do anytime soon, it is certainly true that technology has changed the modern labor market drastically from what it was even just a few decades ago. While examining these changes for a recent policy report, I found some interesting (and useful) facts about how to maximize the chance of economic success in the modern labor market—with or without robots taking over.

As technological progress and automation made workers more productive, greater output could be produced by fewer people. For example, between 1962 and 2005, the U.S. steel industry reduced its workforce by 75 percent without any corresponding loss in output. Powered by automation, the U.S. has shifted from a goods-based economy to a service-based economy. While these economic changes have primarily been met with more calls for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in schools, this focus on cognitive skills has led many to overlook the importance of noncognitive skills, or soft skills.

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