The unemployment rate in the UK is jarringly low. At 3.8 per cent – the lowest in nearly 45 years – the last quarter’s figures appear to spit in the face of automation ‘doomsters and gloomsters’. If robots are out to steal our jobs, they’re not doing a very good job of it.
Yet, the recent slew of factory closures, including Swindon’s massive Honda plant and Ford’s Brigend facility, tells a far less reassuring story. This story starts in the 1980s with the huge job losses in dock work and the automotive and textiles industries, concluding with the wasteland that is UK industry today. Now we are seeing the same disruption affect the retail positions that not long ago replaced manufacturing jobs.
As big tech companies like Amazon hollow out the high street, the empty shop spaces once housing Debenhams, Maplins and Toys R Us stand like melancholic testaments to the success of online shopping.
