Thomas Friedman Quotes

Automation has emerged as a bigger threat to American jobs than globalization or immigration combined.

Jobs will come back when the economy recovers, but they will never be the same.

Smart businesses do not look at labor costs alone anymore. They do look at market access, transportation, telecommunications infrastructure and the education and skill level of the workforce, the development of capital and the regulatory market.

You don't choose. I just go where the work is.

The workplace revolution that transformed the lives of blue-collar workers in the 1970s and 1980s is finally reaching the offices and cubicles of the white-collar workers.

There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore.

In our high-tech, high-skilled economy where low-skilled work is being scaled back, phased out, exported, or severely under-compensated, all the right behavior in the world won't create better jobs with more pay.

The root of the worker’s resistance to technological change is the conflict between labor as a commodity and labor as a resource. Increased productivity imposes upon the worker a risk of obsolescence.

Technology has been advancing so fast that the number of jobs globally in manufacturing is declining. There is no way that Trump can bring significant numbers of manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

Trump can bring jobs back, but they will be minimal-wage jobs, not the high-paying jobs of the 1950s.

Look at trade and automation: two competing but slightly overlapping forces in the shrinking of the duration of jobs right now. We have to be able to talk honestly about how disrupted this world is going to be, and it is crazy to mislead people and say we're going to bring back all of the big factory jobs by creating a protectionist regime.

Our machines increasingly do our work for us. Why doesn't this make our labor redundant and our skills obsolete? Why are there still so many jobs?

I'm working with the New Dems, who are talking about the future of work, which is something I'm very interested in in New Jersey.

People no longer have one job for life, so it is right that younger generations adapt.

Most Americans agree that technology is going to eliminate many more jobs than it is going to create.

Sooner or later, the U.S. will face mounting job losses due to advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

There's never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value.

I don't think that artificial intelligence means doomsday, and I think many new jobs will be created, too. However, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that these new types of jobs will favor low-income demographics. We need to address the needs of those who will be left out of the new job market.

Firms gain comparative advantage from how good their people are. Retaining and attracting talent is a key point of competitive advantage in the global economy. We are seeing that play out, and there are implications for Australia, too. The idea that companies now compete on who can pay their workers the lowest - that's all changing.

The technologists and entrepreneurs I know are generally good people. If they were given a choice, 'Do your job and eliminate normal jobs' or 'Do your job and create abundant opportunities,' they would choose the latter. Most of them would happily even take a small hit to do so. But this isn't a choice they're given.

I think automation will eliminate certain types of jobs - lower income, lower-skilled jobs in manufacturing. But nobody knows whether it's going to change the job basket of the 21st century, or be net positive, or net negative.

In the 21st century, we face new and more intense global competition, spanning the ambitious and industrious economies from Latin America to Asia. To meet the challenge, Britain must rediscover and reward the lost virtue of hard work - a tried and tested route to individual success, national prosperity, and a fairer society.

What people are now realizing is that this formula that technology destroys jobs and creates jobs, even if it's basically true, it's too simplistic.

My honest answer to what's going to happen to the future of jobs is I don't know.

The bottom line is that while automation is eliminating many jobs in the economy that were once done by people, there is no sign that the introduction of technologies in recent years is creating an equal number of well-paying jobs to compensate for those losses.