Economics viewpoint Labour can learn from history as tech hits jobs

Walk through a supermarket and the technology is everywhere.

- Richard Partington

Self-service checkouts, electronic shelf labels, handheld barcode scanners and the video screens showing you - caught by Al facial recognition cameras - leaving the shop.

In an economy struggling for growth, the encroachment of these machines in our lives could be a sign of a new dawn - a tech-driven renaissance in activity after years of flatlining growth in productivity and stalled business investment. No bad thing.

On the other hand, it could be the glimpse of a dystopian future of retailers using tech with low running costs instead of low-paid, but more expensive, humans.

A productivity boom. But who for?

In the past year unemployment in Britain has risen to the highest rate in a decade, excluding the height of the Covid pandemic.

Meanwhile, economic output has maintained a reasonable, if pedestrian, pace of growth. Rising levels of productivity - output per hour of work - is the mechanical consequence.

Much of the gains is down to tumbling employment in low-paying sectors - retail in particular, where jobs are being shed and hiring frozen in the face of rising labour costs.

Bosses have blamed the government for increasing employer national insurance contributions (NICs) and the living wage.