FT: If you think your profession is dying, it could soon be gone

The Financial Times's Sarah O'Connor argues that fear of automation can become self-fulfilling: workers abandon a trade before machines actually arrive, creating shortages that then justify the very automation they feared. Her evidence stretches from horse-drawn "teamsters" a century ago to today's truck drivers deterred by driverless vehicle trials, despite autonomous trucking remaining marginal. The pattern has clear relevance for South Africa, where mining houses are accelerating automation on the back of skills shortages, and where Transnet's logistics crisis has already made trucking an unstable career choice. The warning: anticipating obsolescence too early can hollow out a profession long before technology justifies it..By Sarah O’Connor.It is often easier to see the future coming than to predict how quickly it will arrive. In 1895, Thomas Edison said it was “only a question of time when the carriages and trucks in every larger city will be run with motors”. The following year, Gottlieb Daimler made the first motorised truck. Yet it would be another 20 years or so until commercial trucks became really widespread across America after the first world war.This raises an interesting question — one relevant to the economic moment in which we find ourselves today. When it seems as if an occupation or skill is doomed to become obsolete, even though it hasn’t happened yet, how do people respond? Do they adjust proactively, and if so, how do those choices shape the labour market?In the case of “teamsters” — people who drove teams of horses pulling wagons loaded with goods before motorised trucks took over — the adjustment was made mostly by young people. According to one economic paper, the average age of the occupation began to creep up between 1900 and 1910 as fewer young people chose to enter, even though there were only 10,000 trucks registered nationwide. Over the following decade — which the paper describes as a period of “anticipatory dread” — the occupation’s workforce aged further and began to shrink somewhat. And between 1920 and 1930, as the number of trucks increased dramatically, the number of “teamsters” fell sharply, with the number of younger workers decreasing more than older ones. As a result, the authors wrote, “despite the heavy physical demands, driving a team of horses had become an older man’s job”.Do we see any evidence of the same thing happening today? A recent working paper by Danial Salman examined whether the supply of truck drivers is being affected by the anticipation of autonomous vehicles. The paper found a sharp fall in commercial driver licensing in those Zip codes in California in which autonomous cars have been tested or deployed on the roads. Although robotaxis are not the same as self-driving trucks, perhaps seeing driverless vehicles with your own eyes is enough to make some people see the end of the road. (The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, meanwhile, a union with roots in the days of horse-drawn wagons, is fighting for greater regulation of the technology.)There is a lot to be said for transitions that happen gradually enough that occupations can shrink over time through a lower supply of people entering. It is certainly a lot less painful for individuals than abrupt changes in demand that eject workers from their jobs. But problems can emerge when anticipation runs too far ahead of reality. In 2017, for example, the FT ran an article called “Out of road: driverless vehicles are replacing the trucker” in which one 67-year-old American trucker gestured at a car park full of 18-wheelers and said: “In 10 or 15 years, these will all be autonomous trucks.”Almost 10 years later, commercial driverless trucking on public roads has barely begun (though there has been more progress in industrial sites such as mines). Aurora, a market leader, said this month that its manufacturing partner was targeting an annual production run-rate of just 1,000 trucks by the end of this year. Meanwhile, the IRU — which represents transport operators worldwide — said last month there were 2.9mn unfilled truck driver positions across 18 markets and warned that operators were “deeply concerned” by the “worsening driver shortage”.There are lots of reasons for the shortage of drivers, particularly younger ones: long and antisocial hours, poor roadside facilities, pressure on pay and conditions. But it is possible that anticipation of looming technological obsolescence is worsening the problem. As Salman writes, these behaviours can lead to a “self-fulfilling prophecy” in which people choose not to enter a profession, leading to labour shortages or higher costs, “thereby intensifying firms’ incentives to automate”..Read more:.Hooked on help: AI dependency is reshaping how Gen Z works and thinks - Parmy Olson.Might we start to see this “anticipation factor” begin to shape labour supply in other parts of the economy? There are some signs in the sorts of degrees that young people are choosing to pursue. In the UK, the number of applications to study undergraduate computing has dropped in the past two years. Young people may have absorbed the data — tentative though it is — that suggests AI is lowering demand for entry-level software developers. Nobody knows the future. But in our attempts to anticipate it, we also shape it..© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

FT: If you think your profession is dying, it could soon be gone

Related Stories

The Economist: How AI has helped turn the US into an entrepreneur’s paradise

Why not just invest in South Africa

Andy Burnham enters No. 10: Is Britain's new PM a class warrior or Blair 2.0?

Brian Benfield: The Fair Pay Bill will not create a single sustainable job