🌅 Today’s stat: 60%

SOURCE

Autor et al. (2024)

WHAT TO KNOW

• The majority of jobs people do today didn’t exist in 1940, as contemporary work tends to require knowledge and expertise that wasn’t relevant or known in prior decades. About 75% of today’s white-collar “professional” jobs have been created since 1940, as have about 85% of jobs in health care and 46% of jobs in manufacturing.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The new work created since 1980 has been highly paid professional work or lower-wage service work, rather than middle-class manufacturing or clerical jobs that were created from 1940 to 1980. Since 1980, technology has also replaced more jobs than it‘s generated.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• New work is often created by technology through automating (i.e., replacing) or augmenting (i.e., creating new tasks) existing roles. It’s also created by large-scale consumer demand, like jobs in health care and elder care, and demographic shifts, which have driven job growth in service industries.