Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 6 hours ago

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The MIT Club of Hong Kong is pleased to present a webinar featuring David Autor, Ford Professor of Economics and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, from November 16, 2021. 

Talk abstract:
There is a grave and growing public concern that automation is rendering human labor superfluous.  But the evidence does not so far suggest that we are running out of work.  One key reason why work is not in net disappearing is that new types of work keep emerging.  By Autor’s estimates, more than 60 percent of work done today is found in jobs that did not exist in 1940.  Drawing from recent research, Autor will discuss where new work comes from, how technological innovations both augment and automate human labor, and how we can measure and distinguish these forces.  These forces are not autonomous but depend in turn on institutions, incentives and investments.  A key lesson is that the future of work is a work in progress - a future that we can shape through forward-looking choices.

Biography:
David Autor is Ford Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, codirector of the NBER Labor Studies Program, and coleader of both the MIT Work of the Future Task Force and the JPAL Work of the Future experimental initiative.  His scholarship explores the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes.

Professor Autor has received numerous awards for both his scholarship— the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of Labor Economics, and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2019 — and for his teaching, including the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship.  Most recently, Autor received the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for his work “transforming our understanding of how globalization and technological change are impacting jobs and earning prospects for American workers”.

In 2017, Professor Autor was recognized by Bloomberg as one of the 50 people who defined global business.  In a 2019 article, the Economist magazine labeled him as “The academic voice of the American worker.” Later that same year, and with (at least) equal justification, he was christened “Twerpy MIT Economist” by John Oliver of Last Week Tonight in a segment on automation and employment.