In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen writes that Congress should pass legislation allowing small employers to band together to provide employees access to a common retirement plan. Pozen notes that the new plan “also ought to further reduce the retirement-coverage gap by addressing the needs of part-time and seasonal employees.”
MIT has been named one of the top universities for producing the most employable graduates on Times Higher Education’s global employability ranking. “In addition to its world-leading courses, Massachusetts Institute of Technology also offers career-enhancing programmes for undergraduates, industry leaders and the general public,” explains Times Higher Education.
Sloan Prof. Zeynep Ton speaks with Andrew Hill of the Financial Times about The Good Jobs Institute, which she co-founded to help companies create better jobs. Ton suggests that retailers “simplify the way stores operate, standardize processes, train staff to fill multiple roles…and schedule more employees than are needed so they can perform better and engage with customers.”
Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee speaks with BBC Radio’s David Grossman about the impact that artificial intelligence could have on various aspects of our lives. McAfee predicts that AI will reinvent, not replace capitalism, and that “even if things become very, very cheap because of technological progress that doesn’t strike away at the pillars of the capitalist system.”
In an article for the Financial Times, Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson writes about his new research showing that advances in machine learning could help fuel a surge in productivity and economic growth around the world. Brynjolfsson writes that as machine learning systems develop, “we can have not only higher productivity growth, but also more widely shared prosperity.”
A new MIT study “offers ideas on job retraining programs for professional drivers and other workers who could be displaced by new technologies,” reports Callum Borchers for WBUR Bostonomix. The researchers hope to “provide a tool for people who might be planning these retraining programs that allows them to see what viable skill transformations exist," says graduate student Morgan Frank.
A study from MIT researchers finds that it is difficult for people to switch from physical work to jobs that require mainly social and cognitive skills, reports Kaveh Waddell of Axios. This “may leave low-wage workers with no recourse when manual labor is turned over to robots,” adds Waddell.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes about Technology Review’s EmTech Next conference, which examined how technology and AI will impact the future of work. Prof. David Mindell noted that while AI could impact the types of jobs available in the future, machines will always need human assistance. “When robots succeed,” said Mindell, “they’re never alone.”
The Economist explores the basics of free trade, its benefits and downsides, with Prof. John Van Reenen. “With free trade, you come into more contact with foreign companies, new ideas, new people and so on,” explains Van Reenen. “That’s mutually beneficial. And it is a political force for cooperation.”
A recent study co-authored by Assistant Prof. Danielle Li in Sloan found evidence to support the “Peter Principle,” which theorizes that the best employees do not always make the best managers, reports Rodd Wagner, a contributor for Forbes. The researchers concluded that “promoting based on lower-level job skills rather than managerial skills can be extremely costly.”
Kerry Hannon of The New York Times describes a national trend of workers with “white collar” desk jobs migrating into trades, like carpentry and manufacturing, which now require broader skillsets. “[T]oday many of these workers need to be skilled with computers and statistical quality control processes,” said Prof. Paul Osterman. “In some sense, manufacturing looks a lot more white-collar-ish than it used to.”
Writing in The Atlantic, Amy Merrick describes Walmart's increasing reliance on the gig economy and automation, arguing that "the U.S. economy is tilting further toward jobs that give workers less market power." Merrick cites research by Prof. David Autor, who explains that “the concern should not be about the number of jobs, but whether those jobs are jobs that can support a reasonable standard of living.”
Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen and Sloan Fellow Kashif Qadeer write for The Wall Street Journal about flaws in the SEC’s methodology for requiring companies to disclose “pay ratios”, which is “the CEO’s compensation divided by the median employee’s.” They point out adjustments must be made especially “for companies that depend heavily on part-time workers.”
A study co-authored by Prof. David Autor finds that over the past five decades, automation has helped increase total employment, but wages have not increased, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Morath. According to Autor, the findings help explain “why inequality between the world’s wealthiest and everyday workers has increased.”
Sam Levin writes for The Guardian about a new working paper published by MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research that has "raised fresh concerns about labor standards in the booming sharing economy." The study found that after incurred costs associated with driving, U.S. rideshare employees "make a median profit of $3.37 per hour before taxes."