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" I work a lot on skill demands and changes in labor markets having to do with technology and with trade as well. "
David Autor
Technology
Work
Skill
Related Quotes:
" Manufacturing value chains are global. Many U.S.-made goods have foreign components. Slapping on tariffs will raise prices and slow imports, but it will make us poorer and impede growth. "
David Autor
Value
Will
Growth
" I think we labor economists like to think of ourselves as being closer to the people. "
David Autor
People
Think
Economists
" There's never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. "
David Autor
Value
Education
Technology
" The end of the 'tech bubble' in the year 2000 is, of course, widely recognized, as the NASDAQ stock index erased three-quarters of its value between 2000 and 2003. "
David Autor
Year
Recognized
End
" People tend to think about trade as if it's competition between companies - if Apple wins, Google loses. But that's false. Trade makes nations better off in general. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everything about trade is good and beneficial. Trade also has costs. "
David Autor
Competition
Good
People
" I did a lot of blue collar work. I also worked as a temp. I did, you know, light construction and cleaning. I did clerical temping. I also fix cars and motorcycles and electronics. "
David Autor
Construction
Blue
Work
" Here's a startling fact: in the 45 years since the introduction of the automated teller machine, those vending machines that dispense cash, the number of human bank tellers employed in the United States has roughly doubled, from about a quarter of a million to a half a million. "
David Autor
Cash
Introduction
Here
" The long-term policies that will be most effective all have to do with investment: investing in ourselves, investing in opportunities, creating good schools, and creating situations where people can acquire skills that enable them to be successful. "
David Autor
Opportunities
Successful
People
" The average worker in 2015 wanting to attain the average living standard in 1915 could do so by working just 17 weeks a year, one third of the time. But most people don't choose to do that. They are willing to work hard to harvest the technological bounty that is available to them. Material abundance has never eliminated perceived scarcity. "
David Autor
Work
Harvest
People
" Trade may raise GDP. But it does make some people worse off. "
David Autor
Worse
Off
People
" Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection. "
David Autor
Human
Perfection
Computers
" More than any other issue, economists have kind of been boosters for trade. "
David Autor
Any
Kind
Economists
" Labor is getting a shrinking slice of a pie that's not growing very much. "
David Autor
Pie
Much
Labor
" The Internet promises to open new channels for worker-firm communications. What are the consequences of this opening? "
David Autor
Internet
Consequences
Promises
" There was a great sag in employment beginning in 2000. "
David Autor
Employment
Great
Beginning
" I did software development for a while, and I also spent several years directing a nonprofit in San Francisco that did computer education for the poor. I also did a lot of work in fast food. "
David Autor
Food
Education
Work
" Work is what structures adults' lives: it gives us purpose, focus, a set of responsibilities, and an identity. So when people are not participating in the labour market, all sorts of other things often start to go wrong. "
David Autor
Identity
Work
Purpose
" We have too few college graduates. We also have too few people who are prepared for college. "
David Autor
Who
Prepared
People
" I had never taken any economics. I literally didn't know what it was. I thought it was just about the study of money. "
David Autor
Study
Money
Thought
" History has suggested that the pessimists have been wrong time and time again. "
David Autor
Time
Wrong
Again
" Our machines increasingly do our work for us. Why doesn't this make our labor redundant and our skills obsolete? Why are there still so many jobs? "
David Autor
Us
Work
Why
" If I lose my job at a furniture factory where I've worked for decades, no amount of cheaper toys and raincoats at Wal-Mart is going to make me whole again. "
David Autor
Job
Lose
Going
" The fact that people are dropping out of the labour force says one of two things: either employers have no use for them, or they have no use for the jobs that are being offered at the wages they can command. "
David Autor
Fact
Wages
Two
" I'm a professor of economics and associate head of the MIT Department of Economics. "
David Autor
Professor
MIT
Economics
" There's always new work to do. Adjusting to the rapid pace of technological change creates real challenges, seen most clearly in our polarized labor market and the threat that it poses to economic mobility. Rising to this challenge is not automatic. It's not costless. It's not easy. But it is feasible. "
David Autor
Challenge
Change
Work
" There's a reason I write articles and go out for good dinners: because I'm better at research than cooking. And there are people who are much better at cooking than research, so it's mutually beneficial for us to specialize. "
David Autor
People
Research
Good
" China's rise is really a kind of a world historical event. This is the largest country in the world. It has caused a wholesale substantial contraction of U.S. manufacturing employment. "
David Autor
Rise
Country
World
" The U.S. tends to export high-tech goods because we have strong comparative advantage there, and we tend to import labor-intensive and less skill-intensive goods that other countries can do more cheaply. "
David Autor
Other
Because
Less
" Workers and jobs are naturally heterogeneous, and the quality of their interaction when paired is difficult to forecast. "
David Autor
Workers
Difficult
Quality
" Jobs can change a lot without there being huge changes in employment rates. "
David Autor
Changes
Without
Employment