5.7 The development of workforce occupation
Before the industrial revolution the majority of the population worked in agriculture. Within a few decades this situation reversed and farming now represents an ever decreasing minority of the total workforce. Even so, the overall agricultural output is several times bigger than in times when three of every four people worked in fields.
This trend started when farmers swapped their manual tools for industrial Products such as reapers and sowing machines.
Due to the increased productivity of farming, many field laborers went to do manual work in an industry. But fewer and fewer workers were assigned to manual work since new products called robots could do the same job more effectively.
With the share of manual material work declining, increasingly more people began to work in the mental sphere, on the macro scale called “Services”. Statistics prove that the rate of GDP increase for Services is faster than the increase in material inputs entering the economy.
But the process of people’s replacement is even taking place in services: more people engage in services and more of these services begin to be autonomous. Thanks to the Internet and Artificial Intelligence more and more processes and activities run autonomously. Even the new digital currencies are autonomously generated and stored over the Internet.