For most of the twentieth century, debates about the “future of work” were largely the province of economists. Today, this discussion increasingly takes place in psychology, where the consequences of automation, demographics, and other forces on shifting patterns of employment are seen to have ramifications for mental health, marriage, and much else.
In part, the debate is dominated by a consideration of the implications of automation–for example, whether robots and artificial intelligence will lead to massive job losses–but in part it is driven by changes in the workforce itself: an aging population, for instance, will require adjustments in the patterns of employment as well as in social security and retirement.
What the discussion increasingly converges on is the fact that changes in the economy–whether driven by technology or demography–can have effects on the mental health and personal life of workers, which in turn can have ramifications for the broader economy. For this reason, an understanding of these issues can be critical to making sense of one’s own working life or the working lives of those around us.
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