MIT prof and economic policy advisor David Autor has written an
excellent new paper about labor market polarization, which you should read. In that paper, he cites
an article I wrote for
The Atlantic last year, discussing the possibility of "the end of labor." Mr. Autor makes it sound as if I believe the "end of labor" is coming, but in fact, I only think this is one possibility among many. The point of my article - which was inspired by
this Larry Summers talk - was that the "end of labor" is something we should prepare to deal with,
even if there is only a low probability of it happening. The mechanism for the "end of labor", of course, could be such a huge degree of skills-based labor market polarization that even small labor market frictions would be capable of creating huge amounts of equilibrium unemployment; alternatively, it could be a continuation of the trend of increasing capital share of income, as discussed in
this paper.
The Atlantic, of course, got to pick the title of my piece (as all magazines do with all pieces), and understandably went with something attention-catching rather than something that would reflect the uncertainty I tried to express in the article itself.
But in any case, thanks to Mr. Autor for the mention.
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