Tech CEOs and politicians alike have issued grave warnings about the capability of automation, including AI, to replace large swaths of our current workforce. But the people who actually study this for a living — economists — have very different ideas about just how large the scale of that automation will be.

Some years ago, I had a colleague who would frequently complain that he didn’t have enough to do. He’d mention how much free time he had to our team, ask for more tasks from our boss, and bring it up at after-work drinks. He was right, of course, about the situation: Although we were hardly idle, even the most productive among us couldn’t claim to be toiling for eight (or even five, sometimes three) full hours a day.

Americans believe in the importance of a good day’s work. And so it’s understandable that the prospect of a universal basic income (UBI), in which the government would issue checks to cover the basic costs of living, rubs some people the wrong way. Writing in The Week in 2014, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry envisions a UBI dystopia in which “millions of people” are “listing away in socially destructive idleness,” with “the consequences of this lost productivity reverberating throughout the society in lower growth and, probably, lower employment.”

Will a new job really make us happier? A seminal study suggests no. Research suggests that instead of fantasizing about some dream job that doesn’t exist, we focus on pursuing meaningful goals in the here and now.

Successful careers are often built off of lessons learned, but it’s hard to believe business moguls like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have ever faced a career slip-up. We turn to the Quora community to see what others have to say about their biggest career mistakes.

The nearly $3 billion “Cash for Clunkers” program approved by Congress in 2009 did little to boost the environment and created few jobs, a new study released Wednesday found.

Luis Rivera had some peace of mind for about five months, from late fall of 2010 through early spring of the following year. That’s the closest thing he’s seen to financial stability in more than twenty years.

With Italy’s unemployment at an all-time high of 12.5% and youth unemployment at a dismal 40.4%, young Italians might well think that now would be a good time to go back to school. They might well be wrong. A college or advanced degree may actually put young Italians at a higher risk of unemployment, according to economic data gathered by the European Union’s statistical agency, Eurostat.

Struggling BlackBerry is sparing no expense for new CEO John Chen, bestowing upon him a compensation package currently worth $88 million.

On a cold October morning, just after the federal government shutdown came to an end, Jenner Barrington-Ward headed into court in Boston to declare bankruptcy.

a breakdown of the current and future outlook for STEM jobs. Bright futures for qualified STEM workers predicted.

A curious thing has happened in the tech world. In an industry that has long been considered a boys club, suddenly firms are hiring more women than men. Over the last 12 months, the tech industry added 60,000 jobs, and 36,000 - or 60% - of those positions went to women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of "people analytics" is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote.

A 21-year-old London intern who was found dead in a shower after working for 72 hours in a row died of an epileptic seizure, an inquest has found.

Sure, everyone loves monkeys. But few test that love like Jake Owens. An environmental science Ph.D. candidate at Drexel University, Owens studies the ecology and behavior of drill monkeys. Typically, that involves trips to places like Bioko, an island off Africa’s western coast, where he crawls through snake-infested vegetation to collect monkey dung.

Last month, a blog post by Sam Cookney captured the imagination of anyone who pays a little too much money for the convenience of living near work. He reasoned that, for the same price he paid for his one-bedroom London flat, he could live in a three-bedroom flat near the beach in Barcelona and fly to work in London four days a week. And he'd still have 387 Euros left over at the end of the month.

When government pays for something, it gets more of it. For the past five years, Congress has been pushing “emergency” subsidies for long-term unemployment, and, not surprisingly, we’ve been getting more joblessness — a fact some have been working overtime to conceal.

Vatican City newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reports that Pope Francis, the Fellini-downloading, couch-surfing, gay-accepting, capitalism-hating holy hipster, once worked as a nightclub bouncer. At this point, it would have been more surprising news if L’Osservatore Romano reported that Pope Francis had not ever worked as a nightclub bouncer.

In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkers—creative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from Van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. Online job boards burst with ads recruiting “idea people” and “out of the box” thinkers.

In a post on its employee website, McDonald’s gave some particularly tone-deaf holiday tipping advice to its employees, suggesting what they might give to an au pair or a pool cleaner as a holiday bonus.

A look at SpaceX's "open positions" page shows the company needs people in all types of positions, with a focus on its Dragon craft.

The founder of the New York City-based custom closet design company Clos-ette, Melanie Charlton, 37, does a lot of yoga and dance, but says she has had some of her best workout results sitting down.

People's lives would be more fulfilling if they were given greater freedom in the workplace

That midafternoon ennui that takes over most days isn't a sign that you are lazy or unmotivated; it just proves that you are normal. According to recent research, most people in creative or professional jobs can only churn out about six (worthy) hours worth of quality work a day; the rest is what it feels like — dithering.

A male Craigslist poster in Pittsburgh is looking for someone to attend Harvard University in his stead.

Some doormen say it started as long as six years ago. Others say the surge started more recently. But they all say the volume of packages delivered to their buildings during the holidays has ballooned in recent years, bringing the rush of a mailroom to their once-peaceful front desks.

Being overrated can mean that you’re mediocre but people think that you’re great, or it can mean that you’re completely incompetent but nestle in somewhere and go unnoticed, doing, as Peter Gibbons in Office Space puts it, “just enough not to get fired.” The common facet is that there’s a sizable deficit between your actual value and your perceived value — you appear useful while actually being relatively useless. Here’s how.

Whenever airlines advertise openings for flight attendants, the applications gush in. Southwest Airlines (LUV) recently received 10,000 applications for 750 attendant positions—in about two hours. A year ago, 114,000 people sought 2,500 flight attendant spots at the airline, known for its laid-back work environment. It’s the same at other carriers: US Airways (AAL) had 16,500 applicants this past January for 450 spots, and Delta Air Lines (DAL) got 22,000 for 300 to 400 positions a year ago.

Do you like working from home? Do you like open offices? The debate raged this year about what makes workers happiest--and the best workers. Just be glad this scary rolling conference room isn't where you have your meetings.

As many as three quarters of a million young people in the UK may feel that they have nothing to live for, a study for the Prince's Trust charity claims.

I published a post with answers to the question: How hard is teaching? Here is one response I received by e-mail from a veteran seventh-grade language arts teacher in Frederick, Maryland, who asked not to be identified because she fears retaliation at her school. In this piece she describes students who don’t want to work, parents who want their children to have high grades no matter what, mindless curriculum and school reformers who insist on trying to quantify things that can’t be measured.

A new data graphic released by PBS shows the vast majority of the jobs in our country are now service industry jobs. This includes healthcare, retail, leisure along with hospitality, finance, wholesale and many other industries. The most telling portion of this graphic is the manufacturing section, which shows us that our manufacturing sector is now collectively smaller than the number of jobs we have in government.

Faced with shortages of death-penalty drugs, states for the past few years have explored more "creative" solutions to kill people. Some have turned to secret compounding pharmacies to create the lethal drugs that no pharmaceutical company wants to be seen selling —though the efficacy of such drugs are shaky. Others, like Florida, have turned to experimental sedatives.

Ever had the feeling that your job might be made up? That the world would keep on turning if you weren’t doing that thing you do 9-5? David Graeber explored the phenomenon of bullshit jobs for our recent summer issue – everyone who’s employed should read carefully…

INNOVATION, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over the...