If you think your profession is dying, it could soon be gone
Younger workers once foresaw the demise of horse-drawn carriages – but anticipating obsolescence can be self-fulfilling.
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When it seems as if an occupation or skill is doomed to become obsolete, even though it has not happened yet, how do people respond?
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
Sarah O'Connor
It is often easier to see the future coming than to predict how quickly it will arrive. In 1895, Thomas Edison said it was “only a question of time when the carriages and trucks in every larger city will be run with motors”. The following year, Gottlieb Daimler made the first motorised truck. Yet it would be another 20 years or so until commercial trucks became really widespread across America after World War I.
This raises an interesting question – one relevant to the economic moment in which we find ourselves today. When it seems as if an occupation or skill is doomed to become obsolete, even though it hasn’t happened yet, how do people respond? Do they adjust proactively, and if so, how do those choices shape the labour market?
