Future of Work

NARRATOR: The world of work is changing.

BYRON AUGUSTE: The future is going to be very different than the past.

NARRATOR: Robotics and artificial intelligence are on the rise.

KAI-FU LEE: We're building systems that can directly replace human jobs and tasks.

NARRATOR: High tech and outsourcing eliminate jobs at breakneck speed.

And the COVID pandemic fueled the disruptions.

LAURA TYSON: The pandemic is accelerating the dislocation and therefore the pain.

NARRATOR: For many, the nature of work has taken a dramatic turn.

RAVIN JESUTHASAN: The new deal is now, there are no guarantees-- there's no certainty.

NARRATOR: This is the new industrial revolution.

Like past revolutions, it's creating huge upheavals, but also new ways of making a living.

Are workers up to the challenge?

Welcome to The Future of Work.

MAN: The American Dream is very much at risk.

WOMAN: Americans can't work any harder.

MAN: Robots are coming to take my job.

MAN: It's not even the future-- it's the now.

CHRIS FRANCIS: After 30 years of doing finance and accounting, I was laid off.

My wife is, like, "So let's start looking at different ways to make a living and go from there."

Amazon started this group called CamperForce.

So, what they do is, they have people that live in RVs and are willing to travel to go to different parts of the country where they needed additional help during their peak seasons.

I'm Chris Francis and this is my first experience with Amazon.

I've been placed in a returns center.

A lot of merchandise being returned, and our job is to process that, get it pushed back to the fulfillment centers, where it's being available for the general public to come and purchase it again online.

(doorbell rings, door opens) Who doesn't love Amazon Prime?

Amazon has made shopping cheaper than it's ever been before.

Well, behind that wondrous technology and those low prices are human beings whose jobs are being fueled by the new technology, and those human beings work in mega-warehouses all across the country.

JESSICA BRUDER: They're plug-and-play labor and they bring their houses with them.

I mean, it's kind of an employer's dream.

They're not around long enough to unionize, and when they're no longer needed, they and their houses are gone and back on the road.

CHRIS FRANCIS: We're the new nomad groups, the new gypsy groups that are moving.

GHILLARDUCI: We see these warehouses built in non-urban areas, and around those big warehouses in these vast open places are big parking lots filled with these older workers who have brought their own homes with them, like little turtles who've brought their shells.

JODI FRANCIS: Anything I spend, I'll make sure it ends up in the budget so that at the end of, you know, the next pay, we're not surprised by anything.

We got fuel, extra fuel in.

- Yes.

- For going back to Texas.

- Mm-hmm, I've already put the extra fuel in.

- And then April's gonna have extra fuel for traveling to Missouri.

We got tires at the end of March.

- I just added the tires in the budget for both the RV and the truck.

- Okay.

- It's $3,000.

To get both of them done if we have to get that done in March.

That's a lot.

- And that's if we're lucky.

- If we're lucky, it's $3,000?

- Mm-hmm.

CHRIS FRANCIS: My vision would be, I'd still be working at a company somewhere.

Maybe even my own business.

Definitely not saying, "I'll work in a warehouse for "x number of dollars per hour and do that as a seasonal guy to see what it's like."

I mean, that to me was just nuts.

It's, like, "Okay, am I going to be able to do this?"

NARRATOR: Like many of his era, Chris grew up with the American Dream: the dream of a steady job, a reliable income, and a golden retirement.

And each new generation would have a better life than the previous generation.

DEREK THOMPSON: The American Dream is this dream of constant progress.

This idea that in America, your station of birth is not your destiny.

That you can be born poor, but your biology and your family and your networks, they aren't as important as what you put into your life.

That effort can overcome anything.

NARRATOR : In the 20th century, that dream was within reach.

But for millions now, that dream has faded.

It's been shattered by unstoppable forces...

Globalization and outsourcing, artificial intelligence, and the rise of big tech.

THOMPSON: Only in the last few decades have we begun to see a bit of backsliding, a recognition that maybe this generation will not exceed the state and the wealth and the, maybe even happiness that previous generations reached.

NARRATOR: Francis's hope for a comfortable retirement has evaporated.

Later in the series, his story continues.

How will he fare in this disrupted landscape?

For now, he is part of the new precariat, a rising tide of workers who survive from one short-term, low-paid job to the next.

TYSON: There are many ways-- your income's precarious, your benefits precarious.

You don't have a long-term link to the customer for whom you're providing the service.

It's precarious employment.

NARRATOR: But not all short-term jobs are low-paid.

CHLOE GRISHAW: TaskRabbit is an app and a website that connects taskers and clients to do odd jobs, which we call tasks.

Anything from furniture assembly to errands to organization.

I'm Chloe.

For four years, I've used TaskRabbit.

From my side, as a tasker, I would open the app and mark off my availability, and then-- hopefully-- I get a client who books me in that time.

They describe the task that they want done, how long they think it would take, and then book them on the schedule, and then show up.

NARRATOR: There is a new gig economy fueled by technological advancements.

It operates through digital platforms like Uber, Lyft, and TaskRabbit.

TYSON: The gig worker has grown out of the use of company platforms.

What the person is doing is looking for customers.

What the platform is doing is linking them to customers.

GRISHAW: What I love about TaskRabbit is that it's really flexible.

I set my own schedule, I set my own rates.

I know what I'm agreeing to.

NARRATOR: For both clients and workers, there are no long-term obligations.

When the job is done, the relationship is over.

GRISHAW: Work and the way that we see work is changing.

It's no longer this rigid, like, 9-to-5 idea.

It's a lot more flexible, and apps definitely give you that sense of freedom and flexibility.

Any spare time you have, you can start earning income during those times, which is definitely different from your traditional, "I have one job and that's the only basis of income."

NARRATOR: Today, more than 55 million Americans work in the gig economy.

For some like Chloe, it provides flexibility and freedom.

For others, it introduced even more financial insecurity.

So there's almost two Americas that exist right now: this America that feels basically safe, and can think about things besides paying their bills, and an America that is constantly afraid.

And so, for those people, the gig economy is not liberation-- it's just survival.

It's a way to make ends meet when your regular job has already failed you.

JOHN RUSSO: The work is being further fragmented in terms of part-time, full-time, independent contractors, gig work.

Part of the people are saying, "Well, isn't this great?

People have more freedom."

On the other hand, I'd like to talk to them after five or ten years to see where they are economically when they have no health insurance and no pension.

DAVID SIEGEL: There is a big difference between a job and a career, and this distinction is being lost in our society.

A career is something that will serve you for your lifetime, and it's very meaningful.

Jobs, on the other hand, are very transactional.

The gig economy makes jobs really transactional.

NARRATOR: In this increasingly fragmented world of work, there are winners and losers.

And some businesses are more prone to disruptions than others.

Restaurant jobs are notoriously insecure.

And the COVID pandemic hit them hard.

OJI ABBOTT: The restaurant business is a difficult business in general.

Most go out of business their first six months.

It could be so many different things that you just don't have going your way that you won't make it.

So then you throw COVID into the mix, and then you have places that had been open for 20 years that can't make it.

I am Chef Oji Abbott, chef and co-owner, Oohh's and Aahh's Soul Food Restaurant, located in Washington, D.C. I really love the business.

I love cooking, I love making people happy.

I love seeing smiles on faces and, and people with fat stomachs.

And, and just telling me, "Hey, you know what?

This is the best food I ever had."

Any great chef will tell you, that's payment.

COVID has put a lot of businesses, you know, out into pasture, because it made just an uncertainty of everything that's going on.

You know, one day, you're making gangbusters money, and then coronavirus hits, and now you're not making any money.

NARRATOR: With over 100,000 pandemic-driven closures, one in six restaurants across the country were shuttered.

While many restaurants may never reopen, by spring 2021, hiring had resumed among those that remain.

ABBOTT: Yeah, we're here on U Street, and pretty much the place closed down in every block.

You got a place here, you got a place across the street, a bar, a nightclub.

A lot of restaurants-- I mean, a lot of people didn't make it because of COVID.

Now, I know people had to make tough choices.

Do I re-sign this lease and put myself into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and not really know what's going to happen?

And, hey, I don't blame anybody for making whatever decision they had to make.

But mine was, we had to stay open.

And then we kind of just went with shortened staff and, you know, tightened our belts.

How you doing, my friend?

Come on in.

Our people have always been resilient.

I'm used to not having and doing without, and I had to decide, you know, what we were going to do as far as the daily business and the daily grind.

Are you going to pick up the delivery and the first responders?

And are you going to market a little bit better?

Make COVID specials?

I mean, you had to come up with some great ideas for you to survive through the pandemic.

My grandmother would say, "You know what?

"If you can make something today, it's better than making nothing today."

So we, we just focused on, on making something rather than nothing.

NARRATOR: Restaurant like Oji's survive because they were able to embrace the new world of remote ordering, deliveries, and social distancing.

The trend towards technology-enabled remoteness has taken off across many industries.

COVID is a very complicated thing to sort through.

It has demonstrated that for tens of millions of jobs, it's possible to do those jobs effectively remotely, at least for a period of months.

THOMPSON: I think the pandemic has fundamentally been an accelerator.

I think it's taken a lot of things that were changing very slowly and it's changed them very quickly.

So you look at something like remote work.

It wasn't happening in the '80s, it wasn't happening in the '90s.

It wasn't happening in the 2000s.

But just in the last five years, you've started to see little tiny bits of evidence that remote work was starting to pick up, and then, of course, with COVID, it absolutely took off and accelerated, taking a trend that had already been invented and putting it on steroids.

NARRATOR: This acceleration of new forms of remote work, along with many other transformations, has been made possible by digital technology.

As it displaces some jobs and creates others, digital technology is at the heart of the new industrial revolution.

CARLOS GUTIERREZ: We are in a digital revolution where everything is being displaced by digital technology.

Technology has taken over our lives and it will continue to do so.

So we're going to have to run very fast in order to keep up with it.

NARRATOR: This is not the first time technology has profoundly disrupted the landscape of work.

In the 19th-century industrial revolution, millions of jobs in agriculture and crafts disappeared.

Eventually, they were replaced by other work in factories.

Throughout the 20th century, new technologies upended industry after industry.

Jobs were lost, only to be replaced by new kinds of jobs.

Throughout the centuries, in technological revolution after technological revolution, work and workers have survived.

Will it be the same this time around?

THOMPSON: Agriculture is a great example of how fast the work force can change.

200 years ago, more than nine in ten Americans worked in agriculture.

Today, about one to two in 100 Americans work in agriculture.

It's gone from 90% of the economy to about 1.2, 1.6% of the economy.

But we're not starving.

We're eating more, we're eating better.

We're eating more healthily than we did 200 years ago because of technology.

And so I think that agriculture can offer both an element of fear and an element of hope.

SARAH LOVAS: Technology has completely changed the way that farmers do things today.

It's changed everything from the seeds that we plant to the way that we drive our equipment.

My name is Sarah Lovas and I'm a farmer.

My family's been farming in North Dakota for four generations.

NARRATOR: In the 80 years that Sarah Lovas's family has been farming, cities exploded, and the rural population declined from 70% of all Americans to just 15%.

As new farming technology replaced workers, there was an exodus from the countryside.

Today, there is a farm labor shortage.

Farmers have embraced the latest technologies because they have to.

JAKE JORAANSTAD: You get in a tractor cab today and there's literally three to five screens.

And they're running all kinds of different technologies in the tractor and on the farm.

LOVAS: In my life, the two greatest advances that have affected agriculture include biotechnology and also GPS on our tractors.

As a matter of fact, we don't even hold the steering wheel when we're in the, in the tractor cabs anymore.

So you notice I'm not steering.

No hands!

That's because the GPS is actually steering the combine right where it needs to be, and it allows us to stay within a two-inch accuracy of being on this line that we told the computer that we want to be on.

We hook it up to the auto-steer and the GPS guides the tractor, and the tractors literally drive themselves until they get to the end of the field, and then we turn the tractor around and send it back the other direction.

Even my father-in-law, who's been farming for more than 50 years and has seen so many changes over his lifetime, he knows how to run the computers in there to get auto-steer to work correctly.

Because it's just what we have to do today.

JORAANSTAD: The solutions being driven with technology today are to create a way for the local farmer, the small farmer, the family farmer to be able to actually do more with less because they don't have the labor to come to the farm today and help.

CAMILLE GRADE: There is a tech revolution that's happening in farming, and you see it all around us.

Agriculture is being digitized.

I work at an ag tech company located in Fargo, North Dakota, one of the most productive regions in the world in terms of commodities.

The digitization of agriculture, it's created job opportunities for those that surround the farmer that weren't there before.

We can help with farmers using tools through their smart phones to take advantage of the digitization.

There are irrigation pivot systems that, farmers can now open their phone and they can change the pivot on the system right from there.

NARRATOR: Even with sophisticated technology, economics often work against the small farmer.

Most of the profits in agriculture go to corporations supplying seed and equipment.

They also go to the agribusiness giants that distribute agricultural products around the world.

Farmers know they are small cogs in a worldwide marketplace.

LOVAS: It's very global.

We produce food for everybody in the United States, but we produce food for the whole world.

China, Taiwan.

We have hosted a Korean trade group on this farm before.

NARRATOR: The globalization of agriculture gives farmers access to distant markets.

But it also exposes them to global commodity price fluctuations.

LOVAS: 2018 and 2019 are two years back-to-back that have actually been very challenging economically for farms in this area.

The commodity prices are low and inputs are expensive.

Since then, I'm happy to report that the prices have come back and we are actually hoping to maybe break even.

But keep that in mind, we're hoping to maybe break even.

MARK WATNE: We're a little stubborn up here.

We want to prove that we can do it.

We're eternal optimists, in a sense, where we believe things can get better.

And, and at times, they do get better.

It's, it's not always doom and gloom.

It's, it's a cyclical thing.

Seems like we live in the doom and gloom more than in the, in the good time.

NARRATOR: Despite the many technological advances in agriculture, farmers still have to live with high degrees of uncertainty.

So farm stress is a very real thing now.

And in the last three to five years, the farmer suicide rate has actually increased quite a bit in North Dakota.

Oftentimes, our culture in rural America is to be stoic, and you just tough it out and get through it.

And this is pretty tough.

For... Again, we've got four generations into our farm.

Where's the big tire?

BOY: Right there!

LOVAS: Big tire!

Where's the bucket on your tractor?

(boy babbling) LOVAS: Where's the seat?

BOY: Seat!

LOVAS: Where's the engine?

BOY: Engine!

LOVAS: We have a young son whose first word was tractor.

What's this?

- (babbling) - Is that your trac-tractor?

Hm?

- Tractor tractor.

- Is that your trac-tractor?

He loves the farm, he loves being out here.

Can you show me... - All done!

- All done!

MAN: Go combine!

LOVAS: Okay, go combine!

Should he choose to farm, he would be the fifth generation.

And that's something that's a big, a big burden, I think, for farmers to carry on their shoulders.

When you've got generations behind you and generations in front of you, you don't want your farm to fail on your watch.

Ooh, dump truck.

NARRATOR: Sarah Lovas is on the forefront of the new industrial revolution.

Despite working hard to adapt, the outcome for her and her family is uncertain.

JESUTHASAN: So, many people think that because we've gone through so many other industrial revolutions and each of them has resulted in more work for humans, despite all of the disruption from automation, that it's a foregone conclusion for this new industrial revolution.

And I don't think it's going to be nearly quite as simple.

NARRATOR: One of the differences of the 21st-century industrial revolution is robotics.

With new precision and possibilities, the latest generation of robots is transforming the nature of many jobs.

TOM GALLUZZO: I think in the near term, we're going to see robots working alongside people collaboratively-- and they're actually called collaborative robots now-- that work side by side, safely, in conjunction with people in the workplace to mutually accomplish tasks more efficiently and effectively.

Morning.

MICHAEL JOBST: My name is Dr. Michael Jobst.

I am a board-certified colon and rectal surgeon.

I've been practicing in Lincoln, Nebraska, for nearly 15 years.

I adopted robotics as part of my minimally invasive surgery practice in 2011.

And since that time, we've completed over 650 robotic colorectal operations.

Gotta get to work.

Good morning.

- Hello.

NARRATOR: 15 years ago, Bryan Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska, was one of several hospitals pioneering the use of surgical cobots.

Now they are an accepted part of surgical practices across the country.

KATHY BLISS: I'm Kathy Bliss.

I'm a food nutrition manager for Lincoln Public Schools.

I am going to have surgery here with Dr. Jobst and it's going to be robotics for my diverticulitis.

I'm hoping...

It will be a short recovery for me.

I'm sure Dr. Jobst will do a great job, because I've heard nothing but great things about him.

NURSE: Kathy, how are you doing?

BLISS: Yes, I feel very nervous.

(laughs) NARRATOR: Surgery is so intimate, and the stakes are often so high, it might seem frightening to have a machine holding the scalpels.

But for many procedures, cobots operate more accurately and more safely than doctors on their own.

JOBST: Okay, so let's go ahead and prepare to dock the robot.

(machinery chiming, indistinct chatter) So James is going to drive the robot and Diana is going to direct him.

The robot that I'll be using on Kathy's operation is the da Vinci Xi surgical platform.

It is the latest technology that is available for what we call multi-arm robotic surgery.

AUTOMATED VOICE: Guide the laser line to the endoscope port.

JOBST: It has four robotic arms that we will introduce into Kathy's body.

One of those arms controls a camera.

We're going to put the camera in.

And then there are going to be three instrument arms under my control.

(indistinct chatter) JOBST: So the surgeon puts his or her head into the console and gets immersed inside of the body cavity.

So it's almost like being inside the abdomen in a way that we could never do before.

(machines beeping and hissing) Let's... Let's switch arm four back to the scissor.

NARRATOR: Cobots have brought new levels of precision, control, and safety to surgery.

But does this current generation of robots cost jobs?

JOBST: I don't think any jobs were lost because a hospital has invested in a surgical robot.

We have a circulating nurse in the operating room who has a certain level of expertise in handling the robot, troubleshooting the robot.

We still have an anesthesiologist.

I still have a surgical assistant.

We still have to have surgical technologists, or what we commonly refer to as a scrub tech, who hands instruments, but instead of handing the instrument to me, they're putting the instrument into the robot for me to use.

So all of the necessary jobs that are required for me to take care of a patient still exist.

(indistinct chatter) Let's take instruments out.

WOMAN: Okay.

JOBST: Camera out.

And let's undock the robot and back it away from the table.

Okay, guys.

Job well done, everybody.

I thought the operation went very well.

I'm very pleased with the results.

I think she will be, as well.

NARRATOR: Jobs haven't been lost in the operating theater yet, though the deployment of cobots has changed the nature of the work, and wholly autonomous surgical robots are on the horizon.

In certain areas of medicine, new tech is already outperforming humans.

A.I.

systems interpret x-rays more accurately than radiologists for some diseases, including breast cancer.

You could imagine that tool that a surgeon is using today being a cobot, but tomorrow being the surgeon.

That's just how technology advances.

But I do think that we can sometimes be a little bit too optimistic about the wall that has been erected between things humans do and things machines can do.

NARRATOR: Will robots one day take over?

For much of the 20th century, the image of a world where robots replaced humans dominated sci-fi predictions of the future.

Is that future finally here?

GUTIERREZ: We're not certain where technology is going, but we know, more and more, it's getting closer to having human-like qualities.

Technology's moving a lot faster than our brains can capture.

GALLUZZO: 30 years ago, there was no such thing, really, as an autonomous robot.

You had robots that could basically do repetitive motions.

But by and large, the robots weren't thinking for themselves.

They weren't making their own decisions.

At IAM Robotics, we're making one of the most challenging autonomous robots ever put together.

It's a robot that's able to sense its own environment and see objects, and drive around and actually manipulate things by itself.

NARRATOR: Autonomous robots are already replacing human jobs.

Advocates say that these are the jobs people don't want-- jobs that are dull, dirty, even dangerous.

But they are paying jobs.

MIKE COLLINS: At first, I was with everybody else.

"Robots are coming to take my job."

But after working with them, I got to see what they could actually do and how much they could actually help the warehouse.

And, you know, everything they brought to the table.

(whirring) My name is Mike Collins.

I am the facilities manager here at IAM Robotics.

I started as a cook when I just graduated high school, and I went to hospitality management for college, and then I kind of just grew sick of working in kitchens, so I transitioned to a warehouse.

And then, a few years later, the company pulled us all in the warehouse and said, "We bought some robots and we want you to run them."

I would say to all those people who are scared about the future of robots is, "Embrace it.

"Let it come, because it's going to create more jobs that are a little more meaningful."

GALLUZZO: Eventually, we'll have robots that can more or less do as much as a person can do, but I have no idea when that's going to be.

I don't see it happening in, in my lifetime.

NARRATOR: Robots are still essentially mechanical extensions of their human controllers, but for how much longer?

The exponential growth of artificial intelligence systems with the capacity to perceive and interpret the world around them is bringing the advent of human-like robots closer.

A.I.

systems have the capacity to replace humans on a scale never seen before.

LEE: That very definition of artificial intelligence is to do what people can do, in terms of people's dexterity, perception, and cognition.

And that means we're building systems that can directly replace human jobs and tasks.

When I list the jobs that will get displaced-- all the manual labor, all the routine work that don't involve creativity and compassion-- that's a sizable, maybe 30, 40% of our population.

NARRATOR: While the percentage of vulnerable jobs is hotly debated, one thing is clear: artificial intelligence systems are replacing workers everywhere-- even on the front lines of national defense.

The U.S. Navy now deploys what it calls LCS combat ships, with drastically reduced needs for human crew.

The weapons and navigation are operated by sophisticated artificial intelligence systems.

(rocket exploding) JOHN ZUZICH: So the Navy put new technologies onboard the ship, where those systems could do portions of the work that the sailors had traditionally done, things like the voyage management system or the ship's machinery control system.

NARRATOR: Instead of the roughly 180 sailors needed in the past for a ship of this capacity, these new LCS ships can operate with a crew of just 65.

Many do their work on computer screens.

By using those systems, we could use fewer people to stand those watches.

And so the Navy has gone to that across the board now.

So all of the ships have those smart ship-type technologies.

NARRATOR: Just like in the Navy, A.I.

is replacing human jobs across the whole landscape of work, most profoundly in middle- skilled, middle-income jobs.

Careers in banking and financial services have been particularly hard-hit.

These jobs used to be the image of middle-class stability.

SIEGEL: The financial services industry used to employ enormous numbers of middle-class wage-earning workers.

In New York City alone, hundreds of thousands of people were involved with processing trading activity, banking activity.

These were people that would use calculators to tabulate numbers.

All of these jobs are gone.

NARRATOR: In the last five years alone, half a million middle-income jobs in banking and the financial services industry have been displaced.

A.I.

and new computational systems could do the work faster and cheaper.

Automation has been really turbocharged by A.I.

and robotics.

And so, really, business has tried to reduce the cost of providing goods and services by eliminating humans from work when possible.

(horns honking) NARRATOR: And for those middle-income jobs which cannot be replaced by A.I.

or automation, many can be outsourced to other countries where labor costs less.

Offshoring and automation, definitely, I think of as two of the Bash Brothers that have sort of taken on the American workforce-- that offshoring takes jobs out of the United States and puts them in countries like Vietnam, and China, and places in Africa.

RUSSO: That's why there's a lot of interest right now in the term "re-shoring."

How much work can be brought back from other areas?

But corporations are in the business of making money and keeping labor costs low.

And it's going to be very easy for them to continue outsourcing unless there's political pressure.

There are two major forces that are at play in the future of work.

The technology is only one part of the equation.

The other part of the equation, it's our ability to take work and increasingly distribute it anywhere in the world to the most capable or qualified man or machine under a whole new and different set of work relationships.

NARRATOR: Will these middle-income jobs being lost to technology or outsourcing ultimately be replaced by the emergence of new jobs, as happened in past technological revolutions?

This is the million-dollar question.

LEE: The human job is something that's evolving over time, just as many jobs we have today, some very high-paying, great jobs-- like data scientists, A.I.

programming, robot repair-- didn't exist ten years ago, and now they're some of the hottest jobs.

So more jobs will be created.

This is an ever-evolving process, and we have to work hard to create new opportunities.

NARRATOR: The expansion of highly paid, highly skilled jobs in tech and robotics has been accompanied by an expansion in low-income, low-skilled jobs.

These developments, together with the disappearance of middle-income jobs, has produced what some economists call the barbell economy.

Basically, you have these two different kinds of jobs that are growing-- the high-end jobs and the low-end jobs-- and the middle jobs are the ones that are being automated or digitized away over time.

That's the barbell.

NARRATOR: In 1970, high-, middle-, and low-income jobs were distributed almost equally through the economy.

In the last 50 years, middle- income, middle-skilled jobs have shrunk from 38% of the total to just 23%, hollowing out the middle classes which depended on them.

At the same time, income disparities between high and low have grown.

At the low-income end of the barbell are many jobs that require a human touch and cannot be done by machines-- at least not yet.

TYSON: They're low-wage jobs.

They're low-skill jobs.

They are jobs which, right now, have to be done by humans.

You can't automate a personal service.

You can't automate a lot of care work.

NARRATOR: The fastest-growing sector of the low-income economy is domestic work-- cleaning and home, child, and health care.

ADELAIDE TEMBE: I clean two house a day, sometimes one, sometime it's three.

Sometimes I do small jobs beside the cleaning just to survive, you know.

My name is Adelaide Tembe.

I came to America in 2008 from Mozambique, and I'm house-cleaning.

NARRATOR: Like Tembe, many domestic workers are immigrants and people of color.

They are often underpaid and have little or no job security.

PALAK SHAH: The domestic workers are mostly women who work in our home.

They are nannies, they are cleaners, caretakers, caregivers, therapists, cooks, all in one.

Because we often say domestic workers do the work that makes all other work possible.

NARRATOR: There are two-and-a- half million domestic workers in America.

By 2030, that number is expected to double.

As the U.S. population ages, domestic and in-home healthcare are forecast as areas of job growth.

For many who lose their employment to automation and outsourcing, domestic work may be their most viable option.

SHAH: Domestic work is, in many ways, the future of the economy.

These are the jobs that are coming and these are the jobs that are here to stay.

Domestic workers often live and work in the shadows of the economy.

They are mostly women.

They're working behind closed doors, in the privacy of someone else's home.

So what this then leads to is conditions that are really ripe for abuse and exploitation.

There are so many dimensions to how this can be a dangerous and unsafe job.

NARRATOR: With help from organizations like the Domestic Workers Alliance, Adelaide Tembe has found her feet in the U.S. After long struggles, she's created a life for herself and her daughter.

TEMBE: I'm just keeping myself moving and to stay positive every day and look for more houses to clean.

(laughs) NARRATOR: Many types of work will survive both the pandemic and the new industrial revolution.

Many will not.

The economy is in profound transition.

As old types of work disappear and news ones emerge, the landscape remains uncertain.

TYSON: This period of transition can be extremely painful for those whose jobs are disappearing.

It can be decades.

For some workers, it's a lifetime.

They never find employment at the same level of security and wages as what they lost.

They just do not.

NARRATOR: The recent history of the Rust Belt is a reminder of just how painful these transitions can be.

For over a hundred years, Western Pennsylvania and Ohio were the heartlands of American steel and manufacturing.

Cities like Youngstown boomed.

There was a job for everybody.

Then automation and outsourcing rapidly disrupted these industries.

SHERRY LINKON: Youngstown is a great example of a place where the idea of the American Dream was very clear: you get a good job in the mill, you buy a small house, you have a comfortable, settled, predictable life, and you can do that job for all of your life.

All of that sort of went away.

(distant explosion) RUSSO: And between 1977 and 1987, you had the loss of 50,000 steel and steel-related jobs.

These were middle-class jobs, jobs that had pensions, jobs that had healthcare.

And suddenly, they were thrust into unemployment, under-employment, leaving the area to find work.

And what really happened is, the community lost its sense of self.

Youngstown's story is America's story.

What happened there was the warning to what has happened in a lot of other places, as the nature of people's work lives, the nature of their economic lives, the nature of their community lives shift in ways that they have no control over, that are not about whether they've done a good job or not.

THOMPSON: Youngstown is an absolutely tragic story.

Youngstown is, unfortunately, the perfect example of what happens when the heartwood of a city or town's workforce disappears because of technology or globalization.

And what you see is that the effect isn't just economic, it's psychological.

LINKON: We saw increases in alcoholism, and drug use, and domestic abuse, and depression, and suicide.

That's the measurable stuff.

What we know, too, is that a lot of people felt a sense of defeat and frustration.

LEE: We've kind of created a society where people depend on having their work to feel that they have a strong reason to exist, and then reason to live.

And the dream-- you know, whether it's the American Dream or Chinese Dream or whatever-- it has to do with, hard work is the essence of your existence, and that's the most important thing.

It's very much a problem now, because people will not only come to realize the work that they've taken pride in doing could be done better, easier, and definitely cheaper by automation and artificial intelligence.

NARRATOR: Cities like Youngstown represent the devastating aftermath when jobs go away.

But Pittsburgh, just 70 miles away, tells a very different story.

Having also endured the death of the steel industry, the city is now booming.

THOMPSON: Pittsburgh is a great example of diversification.

You can't just trust that the industries of the 1960s are going to be the leading industries of the 2000s.

You have to expect that change will be the norm.

And the best way to be prepared for change is to, I believe, invest in this diversification of the workforce.

NARRATOR: Because of huge investments in universities and research, today, Pittsburgh is a world leader in robotics and precision engineering.

Uber's self-driving cars and Mars rovers have been pioneered here, along with countless innovations in medical technology.

High-tech start-ups have fueled a demand for a new generation of precision machinists.

NEIL ASHBAUGH: Pittsburghers in general, people in Western PA, really, really enjoy making things.

We have a culture of producing things and bringing value to components and to products for the world.

It's still very exciting, and what we're seeing now is, different industries come up from our work in manufacturing.

PAUL ANSELMO: You talk about robotics, but what are robots made of?

A lot of different parts.

Who makes those parts?

Machinists.

The future is very bright here in Pittsburgh.

We've got a lot of new technologies and new industries that are coming up in the region.

But it'll be machinists that will bring those products to reality and to life.

NARRATOR: At least for now.

The differing fates of Youngstown and of Pittsburgh suggest that technological upheavals in the world of work do not lead to one inevitable outcome.

JESUTHASAN: I think so much of the narrative for the last five to ten years has been very binary.

You've got the pessimists who would say, "Look at artificial intelligence, "look at machine learning, look at robotic process automation, and look at all of these jobs that it's going to destroy."

And then the optimists will talk about, "Well, look at how many jobs "the App Store created, look at how many new jobs are created by emerging technology."

And they'll point to the fact that throughout history, as automation has come about, there has been a net gain in employment.

NARRATOR: Robotics, artificial intelligence, and the other hallmarks of the new industrial revolution are here to stay.

How they are deployed, now and in the future... ...is an open and critical question.

SIEGEL: It's all about pride and contribution.

I really believe that this is a basic human need.

And so as we design future work-- and remember, we get to design what work is, it doesn't just happen to us; the nature of work is designed by humans-- we have to design things that are useful to society, but also provide satisfaction to the basic human needs that we have.

NARRATOR: To what extent society will be successful in designing work that responds to basic needs remains to be seen.

But one thing is certain: seismic changes are underway in the world of work.

Some will forfeit longtime careers.

Others will enhance ways of getting work done.

And still others will create jobs not yet envisioned.

And in this new industrial revolution, there will be winners and losers.

So how best to prepare for this unsettled landscape?

On the next episode: how to stay relevant in tomorrow's job market-- getting ready for the future of work.

For more about Future of Work: pbs.org/futureofwork.

To order Future of Work on DVD, visit ShopPBS or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

This series is also available on Amazon Prime Video.