New SAT Reading Practice Test 15

This passage is adapted from David Rotman, “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs.” ©2013 by MIT Technology Review.

MIT business scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and
Andrew McAfee have argued that impressive
advances in computer technology—from improved
industrial robotics to automated translation
5 services—are largely behind the sluggish
employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even
more ominous for workers, they foresee dismal
prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful
new technologies are increasingly adopted not only
10 in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in
professions such as law, financial services, education,
and medicine.
That robots, automation, and software can replace
people might seem obvious to anyone who’s worked
15 in automotive manufacturing or as a travel agent. But
Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s claim is more troubling
and controversial. They believe that rapid
technological change has been destroying jobs faster
than it is creating them, contributing to the
20 stagnation of median income and the growth of
inequality in the United States. And, they suspect,
something similar is happening in other
technologically advanced countries.
As evidence, Brynjolfsson and McAfee point to a
25 chart that only an economist could love. In
economics, productivity—the amount of economic
value created for a given unit of input, such as an
hour of labor—is a crucial indicator of growth and
wealth creation. It is a measure of progress. On the
30 chart Brynjolfsson likes to show, separate lines
represent productivity and total employment in the
United States. For years after World War II, the
two lines closely tracked each other, with increases in
jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. The
35 pattern is clear: as businesses generated more value
from their workers, the country as a whole became
richer, which fueled more economic activity and
created even more jobs. Then, beginning in 2000, the
lines diverge; productivity continues to rise robustly,
40 but employment suddenly wilts. By 2011, a
significant gap appears between the two lines,
showing economic growth with no parallel increase
in job creation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee call it the
“great decoupling.” And Brynjolfsson says he is
45 confident that technology is behind both the healthy
growth in productivity and the weak growth in jobs.
It’s a startling assertion because it threatens the
faith that many economists place in technological
progress. Brynjolfsson and McAfee still believe that
50 technology boosts productivity and makes societies
wealthier, but they think that it can also have a dark
side: technological progress is eliminating the need
for many types of jobs and leaving the typical worker
worse off than before. Brynjolfsson can point to a
55 second chart indicating that median income is failing
to rise even as the gross domestic product soars. “It’s
the great paradox of our era,” he says. “Productivity
is at record levels, innovation has never been faster,
and yet at the same time, we have a falling median
60 income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling
behind because technology is advancing so fast and
our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.”
While technological changes can be painful for
workers whose skills no longer match the needs of
65 employers, Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist,
says that no historical pattern shows these shifts
leading to a net decrease in jobs over an extended
period. Katz has done extensive research on how
technological advances have affected jobs over the
70 last few centuries—describing, for example, how
highly skilled artisans in the mid-19th century were
displaced by lower-skilled workers in factories.
While it can take decades for workers to acquire the
expertise needed for new types of employment, he
75 says, “we never have run out of jobs. There is no
long-term trend of eliminating work for people. Over
the long term, employment rates are fairly
stable. People have always been able to create new
jobs. People come up with new things to do.”
80 Still, Katz doesn’t dismiss the notion that there is
something different about today’s digital
technologies—something that could affect an even
broader range of work. The question, he says, is
whether economic history will serve as a useful
85 guide. Will the job disruptions caused by technology
be temporary as the workforce adapts, or will we see
a science-fiction scenario in which automated
processes and robots with superhuman skills take
over a broad swath of human tasks? Though Katz
90 expects the historical pattern to hold, it is “genuinely
a question,” he says. “If technology disrupts enough,
who knows what will happen?”