The economy grows, employment expands, productivity reaches records, but salaries decline, a paradox that arises in a context in which the digital revolution transformed productive forms and, although it has introduced significant innovations, it also created imbalances, according to Adrián Sicilia. , an expert in information technology issues, who analyzes this phenomenon, highlighting that the technological boom does not guarantee prosperity for everyone.
In this sense, Sicilia, an Argentine analyst who has lived in the United Kingdom for more than 15 years and CEO of a technological services company, analyzes in dialogue with Télam the impact of technologies on our society and deepens his view of the current situation with emphasis on the transformations of recent years, and warns that there are debates that we should not postpone.
“With global employment rates recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and reaching historic highs, there are fewer working-age people inactive today than before the crisis and average hours worked per employed person are above pre-2020 levels. , according to data from the World Labor Organization (ILO), and at the same time, the economy is marked by high inflation and an exuberant increase in interest rates by the United States Federal Reserve,” said the expert on labor issues. information technology.
For Sicily, in a context of high inflation and sustained demand, one could expect to find increasing salaries, and indeed in nominal terms it is seen, but that number does not reflect the redistributive reality, given that the average salary has been falling for 40 years regarding the productivity that comes with growth.
“The current situation defies some forecasts: instead of registering a cooling of the productive market, as many anticipated, employment is increasing and relative remuneration is increasingly lower,” he stated.
The analyst observes that since 1973 a growing divergence between productivity and salaries has begun if the US economy is taken as an example, where productivity there grew 1.55% annually while salaries barely reached an annual average of 0.31%, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute. In the United States, productivity grew more than twice as much as average hourly compensation.
“What we know today as the Digital Environment laid its first foundations the year we recorded this divergence, in 1973 the first personal computer was installed in an office, the first cell phone call was made and fiber optics began to be implemented,” he explained.
In his vision, the technological advances that change our productive ways bring about great imbalances; While at first they seem to give rise to a period of economic expansion, they end up generating an economic bubble that leads to a crisis process.
“If we think of an economic crisis, our mind suggests the crash of ’39: bankruptcies with a great depression of the markets that expanded to most of the planet; a process of depression that was preceded by a great economic expansion, characterized by the popularization of productive technologies associated with the automobile, electric energy and the combination of mass production and popular consumption.”
The historical perspective highlights the importance of discussing recent advances, and according to the Argentine entrepreneur the dangers are not as expected.
“Although some recent studies suggest that Large Language Models associated with the development of Artificial Intelligences could automate up to 50% of tasks when combined with specific applications, the truth is that automation has advanced less than anticipated” , he stressed.
Sicilia maintains that the challenge will not be linked to massive waves of layoffs and productive redundancies but rather to labor impoverishment, a process that has been growing for decades.
Source: Ambito
