On 13 February 2014, Annalyn Kurtz wrote the article "Chocolate-making jobs on the decline." As the title clearly states, it described how there are fewer jobs in the chocolate-making business. Over the past 20 years, there has been a decrease in jobs. In 1990, about 54,000 Americans worked in this industry. Now there are only 38,000 left. Now, Americans consume about 5.5 pounds of cocoa beans a year still. So why are jobs decreasing if there is still more chocolate to be made??? Well, the answer to that question is that technology is eliminating jobs and producers are shifting work overseas. "Producers from Hershey to Nestlé to Mars, are increasingly relying on computers and robotics to create products more efficiently – they're relying less on physical labor," said Hester Jeon, an IBISWorld analyst who specializes in covering food retailers and producers. In fact in 2012, Hershey's invested $300 million in technology that would work for 24 hours straight. A highly automatized production line in one of its Pennsylvania facilities can make 70 million Hershey's Kisses a day. The company said it trained 700 employees to work with the new high-tech machinery. Now you may say, "Well they are giving some job opportunities still." But you would be wrong. Jobs are going abroad as well, making those back home lose their jobs. "When Hershey's closed down an Oakdale, Calif., facility in 2008, it moved production to a facility in Mexico. An estimated 600 Americans lost their jobs."
I believe that people are depending too much on machines to do the work and this is one of the major causes of unemployment. We are slowly getting rid of one of the factors of production: labor. We replace it everyday in some way and soon humans will not even be needed anymore. This article is a perfect example of that, people need to allow others to work. Technology is good for improvement and can speed up production; however, if it is resulting in people losing their jobs, then it must be stopped. The economy will be effected good and bad by this. Good as it will speed along production and bad as it is resulting more in unemployment. Overall, we need to find a solution to comprehend this problem before it can get out of hand.
This is an interesting topic! I didn't realize that this was already happening. I agree that the fact of machines taking over many jobs is scary. We definitely need to focus on the question, what happens when there are no more jobs left for people? Technology helps in a lot of ways but it needs to be limited to only certain jobs. It is crazy to think if this technology keeps growing and expanding many people will be left unemployed. This could take a huge toll on our economy.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have enough jobs as it is. As technology advances they find more and more ways to replace people because it is cheaper to have the machines working instead of people. It reduces the amount of paychecks they have to provide but also helps raise unemployment.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the loss of jobs doe to technology is alarming, but I'm not sure that the solution is to stop the progress of technology. Human labor can never be completely replaced because there needs to be someone who understands how a machine works and fix it if it malfunctions. We don't want the human race's knowledge to stagnate, so I think that we must think of new types of jobs for people to have rather than banning the use of technology.
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