History is full of predictions that new machines will cause mass unemployment. In Britain in the early 19th century, a group called the Luddites smashed the new machinery that they perceived as threatening their livelihood. Similarly, in the 1930s, factory automation was blamed for high unemployment. And now doom-mongers are again predicting a jobless future as robots and computers take over.

Even those lucky enough to hang on to a job will, they say, face insecurity and low wages. If history is any guide, however, they are wrong. Over the past two centuries of huge technological advances, employment and real incomes in rich industrial countries have risen almost continuously and living standards have risen because of technological change, not in spite of it.
Some of the world's most technologically advanced societies also have some of the lowest jobless rates. But modern-day Luddites remain undaunted, predicting that by the middle of the 21st century, hundreds of millions of workers will be left permanently idle.

It is true that millions of jobs will be destroyed by technology, just as they have been over the past two hundred years. But in the past, those job losses have always been offset by job gains, so total employment has continued to grow along with the population. As blacksmiths and coachmen disappeared, car mechanics and salesmen took their place. Technology changed the types of jobs on offer, but the volume continued to grow. We can expect the same pattern to be repeated in the future.