Winners and Losers

Automation's benefits flow disproportionately to capital owners and highly skilled workers, while the costs concentrate among middle-skill workers whose tasks are most easily automated.

This dynamic hollows out the middle class. High-skill knowledge workers and low-skill manual workers both find employment, but the middle-skill jobs that supported middle-class lifestyles — bookkeeping, clerical work, basic manufacturing — are precisely the roles most vulnerable to automation.