Some “Essential” Jobs Are Still In The Queue to be Automated
The pandemic may speed up job replacement.
Before Covid-19 swept through America, low-wage workers and activists were battling in the states to raise the minimum wage, often referred to as the Fight for $15. Consequently, some states have raised the minimum wage. Maryland’s minimum wage will increase over time, eventually reaching $15 by 2025. However, these same low-wage employees, at some point, were deemed “essential” during the pandemic, illuminating the reality that they’re the ones keeping the economy, and our lives, afloat. For a while, essential employees were given hazard pay, which temporarily increased their pay. Months into the pandemic, companies cut essential employees’ hazard pay.
The problems continue to mount for low wage essential workers. Companies have cut ties with thousands of low-wage essential workers due to COVID-19. Yet, there still is an underlying reality at play, one that existed before COVID-19. Some low wage jobs, already ripe with employment insecurity, are still in the queue to be automated, and COVID-19 could speed up the process.
In 2019, a Brookings Institution’s study showed that food service jobs — cooks and food fast workers, for example — have a 70 to 100 percent chance of automation. Such job replacements (or, what some economists refer to as…
