Think Technology Is Disrupting the Job Market Like Never Before? Think Again.

If you study the U.S. labor market from the Civil War era to present, you discover that we are in a period of unprecedented calm—with comparatively few jobs shifting between occupations—and that is a bad sign, writes Rob Atkinson in the Christian Science Monitor. In fact, this low level of “churn” is a reflection of too little, not too much technological innovation: Lack of disruption is a marker of our historically low productivity growth, which is slowing improvement in people’s living standards.