The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Robert Cyran

NEW YORK, April 23 (Reuters Breakingviews) - “Learn to code” has long been glib advice for old-economy workers who lose their jobs. Now, artificial intelligence threatens to brutalize programmers’ prospects. While the technology is new, the pattern isn’t. Maturing industries have long improved productivity by automating work. As always, more will get done with fewer people.

The news is grim. Block said it would fire nearly half its workers, with boss Jack Dorsey promoting the value of “intelligence tools.” Facebook owner Meta Platforms META.O is laying off 10% of its employees, and may double that later this year, Reuters reported. Granted, both firms over-hired during the pandemic. Yet that was now half a decade ago. Meta isn’t obviously overstaffed today.

Even at staid Microsoft MSFT.O, rapid growth doesn’t mean more jobs. The $3 trillion tech giant is offering voluntary buyouts to employees for the first time, but is on track to keep roughly as many workers as it had in 2022. Revenue and profit, however, both should be about two-thirds larger this fiscal year, according to analyst estimates gathered by LSEG.

Factory workers and farmers can sympathize.

The percentage of U.S. workers in manufacturing peaked at nearly 40% of the non-farm workforce during World War Two. The relative importance of the sector waned as services output and employment rose. As a result, the share of the population working on a factory floor has declined steadily since 1979. Economic output from manufacturing, however, keeps going up. The same pattern exists in agriculture, on a far longer time scale. The net result is that society became richer: each worker remaining in these sectors became more productive, while others shifted to more promising opportunities.

Of course, such shifts aren’t pleasant. The consolidation of farms and the dwindling number of people on them render vast swathes of rural America a ghost town. Transferring industries can also incur a penalty. In manufacturing, production workers receive a 4% premium compared to all non-manufacturing workers, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found. But that premium used to be far larger. In 1907, skilled workers in manufacturing earned twice as much as unskilled workers, according to census data. In tech, the median annual wage is twice the nation’s average, according to BLS data. So many losing tech jobs will see a decline in their standard of living, and the benefit of working in tech may decline in coming years.

Still, people are adaptable. While politicians and voters often profess fealty to bygone employment patterns, they seem to internalize these changes. Four-fifths of respondents to a YouGov poll in 2024 said America would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing, but 73% said they personally would be worse off doing so. One day, perhaps a new generation of pet therapists or lunar air sommeliers will dream of honest work in cubicles, toiling on Rust and JavaScript code.

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CONTEXT NEWS

Microsoft, for the first time, will offer voluntary buyouts to workers, CNBC reported on April 23. Up to 7% of the tech giant's workers are eligible.

Meta intends ​to conduct a first wave of layoffs on May 20, Reuters reported. The social media company will cut about 10% of its global workforce, or close to 8,000 employees, in that initial round, according to the report. Earlier this year, Reuters reported Meta was planning to lay off 20% or more of its workers.