Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation (opens in new tab)

Workplace automation should be about automating specific tasks out of existence and providing a better opportunity to those in a job to be better at it and to do those things that should be under the control of people. I spent years automating tasks out of existence for all sorts of people so that they could do what they were actually employed to do.

One significant feature of many of those tasks that were automated was that these tasks were required by upper level management and were required to be done by those whose work was detrimentally affected by these tasks. Most were reporting in nature.

A reassuring take on the history of automation as a labour substitute. While I'd like to believe the fundamental message here still holds from 2015, recent advances make me a little less confident that the following continues to be true - "many of the middle-skill jobs that persist in the future will combine routine technical tasks with the set of nonroutine tasks in which workers hold comparative advantage: interpersonal interaction, flexibility, adaptability, and problem solving."

(for any put off by the length, the paper is very comprehensively referenced. The actual content is 25ish pages)