In COVID-19 era, US workers see tech as either savior or destroyer

Video caption: Trump promises tax credits for companies to bring back jobs from China – Maria Bartiromo breaks down President Trump’s economic proposals on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

‘Automation can explain labor share decline, stagnant median wages and declining real wages at the bottom,’ says Daron Acemoglu

For many professionals, technology has been a lifeline during the pandemic, enabling them to be productive while stuck at home. For many other workers, it is a new dividing line, corralling them further into the stagnant corners of the economy.

The pandemic has led to unemployment of workers in the service sector, retail and other fields at a scale and with a swiftness unprecedented in the historical record. They are cashiers and janitors, construction laborers and secretaries.

For many, their prospects were already diminished by decades of technological progress. They are, disproportionately, women and minorities, precisely the groups that were already saddled with a spectrum of pay and wealth gaps even before Covid hit. […]

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