Robots, employment and sector safety Above is a chart from CreditSights of employment changes by sector since the start of the last recession. Education and health jobs account for roughly 15 per cent of the working labour force, and their number has grown by nearly 11 per cent. Only mining has posted a higher growth rate (17 per cent), but obviously off a much smaller base. Most of this has to do with the nature of the recession, but to the extent that any sector had also shown immunity to being disrupted by new technology in recent years, it appeared to be education and health. But here comes Ed Luce in Monday's Financial Times: Izzy mentioned a few additional examples in our video last week and has many more at her tumblr. For now I remain agnostic on the impact that roboticisation and technology are currently having on the workforce and on the distribution of income to labour versus capital. There's always some technological disruption going on, of course - the question is whether its effect is now accelerating, and that effect is difficult to measure. Certainly the possibility can't be ruled out, if only because it's always a terrible idea to bet against Izzy; but I'd like to see whether these trends hold throughout a sustained period of economic catch-up growth. If we get such a period and labour markets tighten as historically would be expected, then it might be safe to put aside our worries about this for a little while. Related links: Beyond scarcity series and Leisure Society tumblr - Izzy The robot employment threat - FT Alphaville Obama must face the rise of the robots - FT