How will workplace automation effect the employee’s retirement?

It’s all around us, isn’t it? Machines are taking the place of humans from the most menial repetitive tasks to the most dangerous, it seems machines are replacing us quicker than ever. Computers do taxes, payroll, fly planes and cars. Robots run by their machine brother computers manufacture everything from hot dogs, mining, underwater jobs at depths to deadly for human beings, even fairly invasive surgery. How many of us have lost a job to a machine? Its happening at a rate that can jeopardize our retirement lives. If you lose a job in your peak earning years to a robot, it could be impactful to your retirement savings; but this is nothing new. Our forefathers faced similar plights throughout time.

What happened the first time someone brought in the horse to pull a log across a meadow or a plow through a field to plant crops in Stone Age times? He had to learn another skill. He had to understand this animal in essence this new machine that just took his job. He had to learn how to control it, maintain it and the extra bonus–how to get it to propagate.

What about when someone found a way to put 2 circular discs on a travois making it a wagon? Now a 10 year old child could pull a load that formerly was dragged along by a full grown man who had the strength to do it. Now it would take less effort and power so a child could or an elderly person. Now the full grown adult had to learn how to maybe make wheels, or mount them or implement them in other tasks like grinding flour instead of using a blunt instrument to pound wheat into powder. The printing press, water pump, etc all made people change their way of doing things.

Then comes the industrial revolution with all of the manufacturing wisdom of the ages and once again you had to learn a new skill. If you were producing cloth and clothes the old fashioned way with a loom or processing it by hand suddenly it was a brave new world. Maybe you could learn how to maintain the machine, or build them or sell them. The entrepreneurs who started these large mills in the UK and New England as a lure to change from the agrarian economy to an industrial one, offered the common uneducated folk a chance to not became old and broken physically from manual labor or the dangers of fishing in the ocean in open boats. Urbanization–piles of historical books about this 19th century phenomenon wherein everyone left the countryside and crammed into the cities because that’s where the jobs were- made London the biggest city in the world throughout the 1800’s or at least the one with the fastest growth.

In terms of retirement the industrial revolution helped the common uneducated person immensely as it allowed them to get into a pension if they lived long enough. It also allowed them to eventually get into labor unions and benefit from collective bargaining agreements which gave them the 5 day work week, health insurance, pensions and a break room. It allowed the living standards of thousands of regular unskilled laborers to grow. However uneducated as they may have been they had to come out of the grain fields and learn a new skill. Could the success of implementing robotics into manufacturing in this modern world be history just repeating itself? There’s evidence to suggest it is.

What if you can’t or won’t learn new skills? Some say the older worker of today may be less inclined to learn how computer assisted tasks like CAD-CAM. My client Bob was and still is an outstanding illustrator but when CAD-CAM(computer aided drafting) came along, he kind of resigned himself to retirement because of the intimidation of trying to pick up this way of doing his job. He was truly gifted when he had a pencil and a ruler in his hands but “those damn machines” compromised what made him great. All throughout history, the older highly skilled person was replaced directly or indirectly by the machine especially in manufacturing.

Even animals are not exempt from the effect of machines on their reality. The automobile and locomotive made the horse obsolete and only something the wealthy own nowadays. Even the usefulness of dogs and cats in working environments as we have different ways of herding sheep and catching mice. Dogs can still sniff out drugs, weapons and some police work but the widespread job market of yesteryear for our 4 footed friends has faded decades ago.

The effect of machines in the workplace certainly can be impactful on that senior employee who wanted just another couple of years to pad his 401k account. The younger worker even as young as 50 has already seen their job/role probably change a few times in the last decade or so and could be more comfortable than the senior employee. The mobility of 401K and 403B plans with rule changes in the past 20 years underscores that narrative.

However gentle reader, experts say it takes at least 10 years for such changes to really be implemented so there’s no need to hit the panic button just yet. You may even be able to ramp up your retirement savings before the machines take over. Maybe you remember when calculators that would do the simplest of math were the size of a phone book– mid 1970’s maybe? It took a while for such a useful device to become the size of a credit card….maybe 1994? So there’s still time.