If I've learned one thing in 20-odd years as a member of the legal academy, it's that you generally shouldn't take economic advice from constitutional law professors. Case in point, courtesy of ex-con law prof Barack Obama, as summarized by Jim Treacher:
Obama thinks ATMs cause unemployment—No, really, he does! That's not a joke headline. He said it out loud in front of the whole world and everything. On yesterday's "Today Show," Obama told Ann Curry his brilliant theory about why the economy hasn't been doing so well since he became president: "There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate."
That's right, the Smartest President Ever just said innovation is a job-killer. His next step, presumably, will be to demonize the Republicans for making such deep cuts to the Department of Buggy Whips. Hey, why is the President of the United States blaming machines for unemployment . . . on TELEVISION? Doesn't he care about all those out-of-work town criers?
As The Economist's Democracy in America blog observed:
ATMs have not in fact displaced bank tellers. According to this 2004 Charles Fishman article in Fast Company:
At the dawn of the self-service banking age in 1985, for example, the United States had 60,000 automated teller machines and 485,000 bank tellers. In 2002, the United States had 352,000 ATMs—and 527,000 bank tellers. ATMs notwithstanding, banks do a lot more than they used to and have a lot more branches than they used to.
More recently, the Bureau of Labour Statistics reports there were 600,500 bank tellers in 2008, and the BLS projects this number will grow to 638,000 by 2018. Mr Obama clearly picked a poor example. It's worth noting that the advent of the ATM also created demand for ATM maintenance workers. According to the BLS, there were 152,900 "computer, automated teller, and office machine repairers" in 2008. I'm not sure how many of these are in the ATM repair biz, but the BLS expects a mild decline in this line of work due to increasingly reliable machines and declining replacement costs. Evidently, the relationship between technological advance and employment is complicated.
Exactly. Technological change probably has eliminated some jobs, but I'm willing to bet that Obama's job-killing policies have done far more damage.
