When Blue Turns White: Technology Popping Collars Across All Borders

Since the beginning of England's Industrial Revolution, the impact of emerging technologies on the labor force has been subject to much controversial debate by some of the world's most prominent thinkers. In 1930, John Keynes described the emergence of technological unemployment: "This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor". Against the backdrop of the enormous increase in unemployment instituted by the financial crisis of 2007-, along with the heavy mechanization of work in all sectors of the economy, many economists are starting to study more specifically the impact of automation processes on the labor force. Could it be that the economy may not recover all jobs lost during the Recession? The idea that workers will be reabsorbed into the economy by newly created industries is being questioned. This book aims at contributing to the understanding of the influence of technology investments on the labor force in the United States today.