I am pondering this, wondering about trends historically that have been happening. I am looking at factors and wondering why it won't be so. I want to look over a number of assumptions and ask if they are correct, because they would seem to point to eventual large scale unemployment (otherwise known as people getting paid for work). These trends and assumptions, please correct:
* These are the sectors of the economy that employ people: agriculture, manufacturing, services, intellectual properties (includeding data and information processing, software and other entertainment related products, R&D fits into here also), financial industries (the flow of currency in an economy). Anyone see any other sectors involved here I have missed?
* Historically, agriculture dropped a HUGE degree, to employing a very small percentage of the U.S population, with the U.S being a leading exporter of food:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States
In 1870, 70-80 percent of the US population was employed in agriculture.[citation needed] As of 2008, approximately 2-3 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture. See this USDA link, http://www.csrees.usda.gov/qlinks/extension.html for more information and history on U.S. agriculture. This has been the historic trend everywhere also.
* Manufacturing in America has shown large productivity gains, and increases in exports, but a decline in population employed in manufacturing:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/02/25/the-truth-about-the-great-american-manufacturing-d.aspx
* Services: Following the current trends seen with manufacturing and agriculture, any indication that the likes of retail or other areas won't also end up seeing the need for less labor as time goes on? There is an increased amount of self-service everywhere, including check outs at cash registers, and so on. Look at Walmart for example. You have Big Box stores that have driven down costs. People also use the Web more to no only order, but also to get answers.
* Intellectual properties: There has been a trend towards crowdsourcing and also a flood of cheap or free apps. To see one industry you have, it is the videogame industry. Look at the crying out against apps on portable devices. There is a glut of content being produced. And video production quality for videos has gone up, allowing increased productivity here. The videogame industry operates on razor thin margins. Is the trend for the videogame industry to employ larger or smaller teams in the future? I saw EA article on here saying that the smaller team approach is the future. Exactly how big does a team need to be to produce an Angry Bird? And as far as research and development goes, what exactly is new areas coming along that aren't just the same things, but in need of less people?
* Financial industry: Exactly how many people are needed to push paper and financial instruments around, or sell insurance? Doesn't the Web scaling the ability to serve also impact in this also?
Please fill me in on what I am missing here. Exactly what is going to prevent perpetual increase in unemployment that will be irreversable? How do we know that 20% under/unemployment rates won't be the norm from here on out? Why won't this be so?
