Busting the Myths of Manufacturing Jobs and Automation

There are many common myths when it comes to manufacturing jobs. Those may be part of the reason companies are struggling to find new talent to fill some 500,000 manufacturing job openings. One myth is that manufacturing sites are dirty, loud, dangerous, and soul-killing. Not any longer. Factory work has more in common with video games than loud and frightening stamping machines. Another myth is that automation kills jobs. Not so fast. The rise of the computer is a good example. The automation that came from computers didn’t deliver a net job loss until the 1990s after computers had been deployed for decades. Computerization created jobs. When the computer finally began to eliminate jobs en mass – mostly secretarial and bank teller jobs – you didn’t hear any complaints. People in those jobs moved on to more interesting work.