Public Employee Press

Viewpoint
Is technology killing the middle class?

More than 53 percent of college graduates in the United States are either unemployed or underemployed as automation continues to kill off jobs.

By PAUL F. RENDA

The middle class appears to be dying. One reason is the growth of technology and the resulting reduction in employment as wealth is created for a few.

In the 1980s, I worked at a major brokerage house in downtown Manhattan. My office went through its own great collapse of middle class jobs.

At the beginning of my employment at the firm, the mainframe computers were fed information by keypunch operators, working in large bullpens. But in the course of my career, technological improvements eliminated the need for keypunch operators.

Technology also had a great impact on other departments. In the computer room, the jobs of tape librarians and computer operators were entrylevel positions for high school students or college graduates without math degrees. Those positions disappeared as companies moved to robotic tape storage systems.

The IT department eventually put a PC on each employee's desk. This meant managers and vice presidents had less need for assistants to provide specifications for reports or queries.

An array of mid- and low-level positions, such as secretaries, systems analysts, manual systems analysts, documentation analysts, and mail room personnel, were affected by this change. Managers and vice presidents now had email; instead of relying on a secretary, managers could write memos, letters and reports by using word processing programs.

By the end of the 1980s, the brokerage house where I worked had about two-and-a-half vacant floors in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Unfortunately, nobody had the time or interest to perceive or study what was happening in our industry. The entrylevel, middle class jobs-which paid between $12,000 and $40,000 dollars in the 1980s-jobs that allowed people to move into a higher socioeconomic class- largely vanished.

A Shift in Economic Power

Today, the center of commerce is moving from the West to Asia: China and India have experienced a dramatic growth in their middle class. They are in the advantageous position of playing catch-up through their hightechnology economies

As the world struggles to recover from the global recession, China is becoming the creditor nation for the United States. Creditor nations are economic leaders, as was the case after the Great Depression, when the United States became a creditor nation and the economic powerhouse of the world.

More than 53 percent of college graduates in the United States are either unemployed or underemployed as automation continues to kill off jobs.

As I talk to parents these days, I advise them to prepare their children to be willing to work abroad. The opportunities here are diminishing as the American middle class disappears.

It is hard to feel optimistic about the future.


Paul F. Renda is a Computer Software Specialist 3 and member of Electronic Data Processing Personnel Local 2627.