SELF-SERVICE --Passengers use the self service check-in at the U.S. Airways gate at Dallas-Fort Worth

SELF-SERVICE —Passengers use the self service check-in at the U.S. Airways gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, in Grapevine, Texas. According to a three-month AP investigation released in January 2013, five years after the start of the Great Recession, instead of relying on someone else in the workplace or their personal lives, people disney world tickets discount are using technology to do tasks independently. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
disney world tickets discount Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market. What s more, these jobs aren t just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they aren t just factory work. Increasingly, disney world tickets discount jobs are disappearing in the service disney world tickets discount sector, home to two-thirds of all workers.
Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other machines and devices becomes more sophisticated and powerful and capable of doing more efficiently tasks that humans have always done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, disney world tickets discount replaced by our machines; an Associated Press analysis finds that the future disney world tickets discount has arrived.
The jobs that are going away aren t coming back, says Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author disney world tickets discount of Race Against the Machine. I have never seen a period where computers demonstrated as many skills and abilities as they have over the past seven years.
The global economy is being reshaped by machines that generate and analyze vast amounts of data; by devices such as smartphones and tablet computers that let people work just about anywhere, even when they re on the move; by smarter, nimbler robots; and by services that let businesses rent computing power when they need it, instead of installing expensive disney world tickets discount equipment disney world tickets discount and hiring IT staffs to run it. Whole employment categories, from secretaries to travel agents, are disappearing.
There s no sector of the economy that s going to get a pass, says Martin Ford, who runs a software company and wrote The Lights in the Tunnel, disney world tickets discount a book predicting widespread job losses. It s everywhere.
The numbers startle even labor economists. In the United States, half of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. But only 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained since the recession ended in June 2009 are midpay. Nearly 70 percent are low-paying jobs; 29 percent pay well.
In the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency, the numbers are even worse. Almost 4.3 million low-pay jobs have been gained since mid-2009, but the loss of midpay jobs has never stopped. A total of 7.6 million disappeared from January 2008 through last June.
Some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers for smartphones disney world tickets discount and tablet computers. But, overall, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating.
To better disney world tickets discount understand the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists, technology experts, disney world tickets discount robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs, and workers who are competing with smarter machines.
—Over the past 50 years, technology has drastically reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing. Robots and other machines controlled by computer programs work faster and make fewer mistakes than humans. Now, that same efficiency is being unleashed in the service economy.
—Technology is being adopted by every kind of organization that employs people. It s replacing workers in large corporations and small businesses, disney world tickets discount established companies and startups, schools, hospitals, nonprofits and the military.
disney world tickets discount —The most vulnerable workers are doing repetitive tasks that programmers can write software for — an accountant checking a list of numbers, an office manager filing forms, a paralegal reviewing documents for key words to help in a case.
—It s becoming a self-serve world. Instead of relying on someone else in the workplace or our personal disney world tickets discount lives, we use technology to do tasks ourselves. This trend will grow as software disney world tickets discount permeates our lives.
The lingering pain of the Great Recession is not entirely a result of technology s advances. Other factors are keeping companies from hiring — partisan gridlock in the U.S., for instance, and the debt crisis in Europe, which has led to deep government spending cuts.
But 42 months after the Great Recession ended, the U.S. has gained only 3.5 million, or 47 percent, of the 7.5 million jobs that were lost. The 17 countries that use the euro had 3.5 million fewer jobs last June than in December 2007.
Fifty percent of the U.S. jobs lost were in midpay industries, but Moody s Analytics, a research firm, says just 2 percent of the 3.5 million disney world tickets discount jobs gained are in that category. disney world tickets discount After the four previous recessions, at least 30 percent of jobs created disney world tickets discount — and as many as 46 percent — were in midpay industries.
Some of the most startling studies have focused on midskill, midpay jobs that require tasks that follow well-defined procedures and are repeated throughout the day. Think travel agents, salespeople in stores, office assistants and back-office workers like benefits managers and payroll clerks, as well as machine operators and other factory jobs. An August 2012 paper by economists Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia and Nir Jaimovich of Duke University found these kinds of jobs comprise fewer than half of all jobs, yet accounted for nine of 10 of all losses in the Great Recession. And they have kept disappearing in the economic recovery.
Developing economies have been spared the technological disney world tickets discount onslaught — for now. But even they are beginning to use more machines in manufacturing. The cheap labor they relied on to make goods from apparel to electronics is no longer so cheap as their living standards rise.
One example is Sunbird Engineering, a Hong Kong firm that makes mirror frames for heavy trucks at a factory in southern China. Salaries at its plant in Dongguan have nearly tripled from $80 a month in 2005 to $225 today. Automation is the obvious next step, CEO Bill Pike says.
Sunbird is installing robotic arms that drill screws into a mirror assembly, work now done by hand. The machinery will allow the company to eliminate two positions on a 13-person assembly line. Pike hopes that additional automation will allow the company to reduce another five or six jobs from the line.
Book your vacation using an online program? You ve helped lay off a travel agent — perhaps one at American Express Co., which announced this month that it plans to cut 5,400 jobs, mainly in its travel business, as more of its customers shift to online portals to plan trips.
Software is picking out worrisome blots in medical disney world tickets discount scans, running trains without conductors, driving cars without drivers, spotting profits in stock trades in milliseconds, analyzing Twitter traffic to tell where to sell certain snacks, disney world tickets discount sifting through documents for evidence in court cases, recording power usage beamed from digital utility meters at millions of homes, and sorting returned library books.
The Hackett Group, a consultant on back-office jobs, estimates 2 million of them in finance, human resources, information technology and procurement have disappeared in the U.S. and Europe since the Great Recession. And it pins the blame for more than half of the losses on technology. These are jobs that used to fill cubicles at almost every company — clerks paying bills and ordering supplies, benefits managers filing health-care forms and IT experts helping with computer crashes.
Historically, new companies and new industries have been the incubator of new jobs. But even these companies are hiring fewer people. The average new business employed disney world tickets discount 4.7 workers when it opened its doors in 2011, down from 7.6 in the 1990s, according to a Labor Department disney world tickets discount study released last March.
Technology is probably to blame, wrote the report s authors, Eleanor Choi and James Spletzer. Entrepreneurs no longer disney world tickets discount need people to do clerical and administrative tasks to help them get their businesses off the ground.
Entrepreneur Andrew Schrage disney world tickets discount started the financial advice website Money Crashers in 2009 with a partner and one freelance writer. The bare-bones start-up was only possible, Schrage says, because of technology that allowed the company to get online disney world tickets discount help with accounting and payroll and other support functions without hiring staff.
Had I not had access to cloud computing and outsourcing, I estimate that I would have needed 5-10 employees to begin this venture, Schrage says. I doubt I would have been able to launch my business.
But they eventually create more work, and greater wealth, than they destroy. Many economists are encouraged by history disney world tickets discount and think the gains eventually disney world tickets discount will outweigh the losses. But even they have doubts.
What s different this time is that digital technologies show up in every corner of the economy, says MIT s McAfee, a self-described digital optimist. Your tablet (computer) is just two or three years ago, and it s already taken over our lives.
Occupations that provided middle-class lifestyles for generations can disappear in a few years. Utility meter readers are just one example. As power companies began installing so-called smart readers outside homes, the number of meter readers in the U.S. plunged from 56,000 in 2001 to 36,000 in 2010, according to the Labor Department.