9 Average working hours have indeed come down, but they are nowhere near the level Keynes imagined. Doomy predictions suggesting that machines would at a certain point in the future have ‘an absolute and a comparative advantage over humans in all activities’ 10 are likely to prove misplaced. 11 However, technological advances do imply changes in the occupational structure.
In recent years, many have detected one such change in the form of a ‘polarization’ of the labour market. Middle-range jobs involving routine-intensive tasks, which can be easily automated, have been hardest hit; as a share of total employment, they have fallen by about 7 percentage points in the US and 9 points in Europe.