If the supply of cheap workers is restricted and the cost of employing people rises, firms will have a greater incentive to boost spending on new labour-saving equipment.
This feels very much like that talk about the magical technology that will make border checks unnecessary. Yes, in the economist dream world labour saving devices just appear if there is investment but in reality certain types of fruit are very delicate and hard to pick automatically and any kind of development there would certainly not be limited to just the UK and hospitality also has many tasks that are hard to automate.
It’s obviously a “glass half full“, “make lemonade” kind of story. I admire their effort to put on a brave face, though.
My main worry is that when there’s these kind of labor market shocks, not all fields are affected equally. Some jobs are just really hard to automate, and prices shoot up eg in health care hurting people that are often already vulnerable. With the NHS, costs won’t be passed on the users directly, but it will lead to staff shortages and increased waiting.
Still I look forward to the UK working out the kinks of all these technologies, so we can deploy them widely and at much lower cost globally…,
UK is importing record numbers of health and social care professionals. No one’s automating nurses and carers.
General practitioners, maybe. AI can diagnose skin cancer faster and far more efficiently already, and with cancer, early diagnosis is key.
