The 140-Year Job Revolution: From Farms to AI

Five charts to start your day

Right then! I want to share something rather fascinating about how jobs have changed in America over the past 140 years. Take a look at this fantastic chart from the Aspen institute. I believe employment share has been represented in fractions are rather than percentages. It's a bit weird but it still adds up to one.

Anyway, picture this – in 1880, more than 40 percent of Americans worked as farmers. By 1970, that dropped to just 3 percent. Meanwhile, another 40 percent had blue-collar jobs in manufacturing and construction. That stayed steady until 1960, then fell to 20 percent by 2010.

The remarkable thing is how new jobs emerged as old ones faded away. Take software developers – now one of the fastest-growing professions, yet impossible before personal computers existed. Or electrical engineers – well, you need electricity first, don't you?