Above: Nadiia Shyrobokova composes an invitation to an online meeting on her computer. While some tastes and styles will endure, the world of work is rapidly evolving. Photo by Valeriia Radchencko
Technology-driven entrepreneurship is the key to achieving sustainable economic growth. So contends Economic Impact Catalyst, a Florida business that supplies software to organizations for use in relationship and community building. Such connection, the company believes, will become increasingly important as advances in AI cause the buying and selling of information to fade away as a component of daily life.
In an article posted to its website, Economic Impact Catalyst points to the impacts of technology on economic development spurred by entrepreneurs. Technological advances, it finds, are “providing new opportunities for entrepreneurs through optimization, automation, audience reach and more.”
Noting the rapid disappearance of one-time office staples such as manila folders and file drawers, Economic Impact Catalyst reports that “tools such as cloud computing, social media, and e-commerce platforms have significantly reduced the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs.”
Optimized technology facilitates efforts by entrepreneurs to develop and market new products and services.
“Through advanced analytics, AI and machine learning, entrepreneurs can better understand their customers’ needs and preferences and develop tailored solutions,” the article states. “Technology has also helped generate methods that assist entrepreneurs in scaling their businesses more quickly and efficiently.”
Constantly evolving technologies and technology-driven entrepreneurship are dramatically affecting the world of work and how people prepare themselves for that world.
Overall employment in computer and information technology occupations, for example, is projected to grow much faster than the average for all occupations between now and 2033, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
About 356,700 openings are projected each year, on average, in these occupations. The median annual wage for jobs in this group was $105,990 in May 2024, the Bureau reports, which was much higher than the median annual wage for all occupations of $49,500.
A study compiled by MIT economist David Autor finds that six out of 10 jobs that people do today did not exist in 1940.
Peter Dizikes, writing about the study for MIT News, notes, “In 1900, Orville and Wilbur Wright listed their occupations as ‘Merchant, bicycle’ on the U.S. census form. Three years later, they made their famous first airplane flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. So, on the next U.S. census, in 1910, the brothers each called themselves ‘Inventor, aeroplane.’”
The churn and diversification among occupations only took off from there. In the past 40 years, reports Dizikes, citing Autor, most new job creation has involved either highly paid professional work or low-wage service work.
To conduct their study, Autor and team, notes Dizikes, “dug deeply into government data about jobs and patents, using natural language processing techniques that identified related descriptions in patent and census data to link innovations and subsequent job creation. The U.S. Census Bureau tracks the emerging job descriptions that respondents provide — like the ones the Wright brothers wrote down.”
While no one can know precisely how AI and other technologies — including some that may remain to be discovered — will affect the workplace, Autor et al endeavored to explore whether technology will add more jobs that it will eliminate.
Reports Dizikes, “they used new methods to examine how many jobs have been lost to machine automation, and how many have been generated through augmentation, in which technology creates new tasks. On net, the study finds, and particularly since 1980, technology has replaced more U.S. jobs than it has generated.”
Over the last 40 years, finds Autor, technological trends have exacerbated a gap in wages in the U.S. Newly emerged fields are split between high-paying and low-income jobs.
“The new work is bifurcated,” he says. “As old work has been erased in the middle, new work has grown on either side.”
