Lump of labour fallacy

While many workers fear that automation or artificial intelligence will take their jobs, history has shown that when jobs in some sectors disappear, jobs in new sectors are created. One example is the United States, where a century of increasing productivity and technological improvements changed the percentage of Americans employed in the production of food from 41% of the workforce in 1900 to 2% in 2000. This change did not result in large-scale unemployment, because workers found jobs in newly created industries (like farm equipment manufacturing). Another way to state this is that automation or technological improvements free workers to move to new growing industries. ==Immigration and women in the workforce==

While many people worry that new immigrants to their country will reduce employment (the same way US men in the 1960s worried that women's entry into the workforce would lead to massive unemployment) the data show that this did not happen because new workers earn money which they spend with the result being that the total economy grows and more people are employed. == Early retirement ==

Early retirement has been used to induce workers to accept termination of employment before retirement age following the employer's diminished labour needs. In an editorial in The Economist a thought experiment is proposed in which old people leave the workforce in favour of young people, on whom they become dependent for their living through state benefits. It is then argued that since growth depends on having either more workers or greater productivity, the society cannot really become more prosperous by paying an increasing number of its citizens unproductively. The article also points out that even early retirees with private pension funds become a burden on society as they also depend on equity and bond income generated by workers. == See also ==