Understanding Economic Equilibrium

CHAPTER 24

A Shrinking Workforce: Jobs and Work in the Twenty-First Century

In The Rise and Fall of American Growth (2016), Robert J. Gordon described a century of rapid economic growth fueled by technical innovations, one of the most important being the development of various forms of engines that created propulsion without the aid of moving water. That it was technically feasible to move goods off water, or to make goods without the power of moving water, had widespread implications for the U.S. labor market, including a decreased demand for human muscle. The new engines did work that previously required people and animals: tractors, and later trucks, replaced those original “teamsters,” teams of draw horses and mules. The engines displaced ...