Theory Of Technological Unemployment

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Abstract Unemployment is an economic condition marked by the fact that individuals actively seeking jobs remain un-hired. The level of unemployment varies with economic conditions and other circumstances. Diminution of jobs caused due to technological amelioration is referred to as technological unemployment. Many sociologists, social scientists and governments have expressed their concern over the same and have tried to obtain solutions. The following paper is our attempt to track the significance of unemployment caused due to the changes in technology at an aggregate level and derive its nature. Our Paper consists of five sections. The first section explores the theory of Induced Bias in Innovation and derives results regardingtechnological…show more content…
This helped us in establishing a working relationship between technological innovations and employment.The second section explores the nature of technological unemployment. In this section we have used the theory of business cycles to make for our case. Primarily, we have used the concept of Kondratiev Waves. These are periodic movements arising from a bunch of basic innovations that launch technological revolution. One revolution of the wave consists of four phases namely, prosperity, recession, depression and improvement. We also used the works of Carlota Perez who placed similar phases on a curve she named Logistics Curve. We were able to trace a similarity between the phases proposed by either of them and concluded that the phase called Recession (termed“Synergy” by Perez) depicts a period wherein the economy experiences an increase in unemployment (on account of Technology and Employment: A Parallel Theory a new innovation taking place). Based on our study, we reached the conclusion that every time there is a technological innovation having potential enough to launch a technological revolution, the occurrence technological unemployment is indisputable. Furthermore we will find that periodicity and continuity of…show more content…
That is, every time an innovation takes place, a major increase in employment occurs as a result of new innovation. So, technological “employment” too is indisputable and inexorable. Furthermore, on the basis of arguments proposed so far, we established relationships among employment, innovation and time and deduced that changes in employment (purely as a result of innovation) are an implicit function of time. And again, the periodicity and continuity of a Kondratiev Wave helped us to establish that these changes too, occur periodically and continually. Using all these results, we traced the trends in these changes and obtained a wave like movement which not only is in agreement with our arguments but also proves the claims made by Kennedy. We named this wave the “Technical Employment Wave”. It should be understood that we are not asserting this wave as a new Business cycle, but it is merely an explanation of the changes in employment that occur due to technological innovations and an attempt to answer the misconceptions regarding technological unemployment. The next section is our attempt on criticizing the
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