WHERE WILL THE NEW JOBS COME FROM?
Productivity has risen rapidly over the past year, to the astonishment and delight of most economists. But a lot of people are still worried. What if increased productivity means that jobs disappear? Could the economy get too efficient? All over the world, even in China, factories are producing more stuff with fewer workers. On the Internet, visionaries fret over the rise of robots, while programmers denounce American companies for "outsourcing" their once-secure jobs to Indian engineers. Is this the recession -- or the recovery -- that does away with American jobs for good?
I take up this question in this weekend's NYT Magazine.