Recession, technology blamed for killing middle-class jobs

Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over. And according to a new analysis by The Associated Press, the situation is even worse than it appears. Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market. What’s more, these jobs aren’t just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they aren’t just factory work. Increasingly, jobs are disappearing in the service sector, where two-thirds of all workers are employed. They’re being obliterated by technology. Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other machines and devices becomes more sophisticated and powerful and capable of doing more efficiently tasks that humans have previously done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, replaced by our machines—and The Associated Press analysis says the future has arrived. Read the first of a three-part series on the loss of middle-class jobs in the wake of the recession, and on the role technology has played, here.