We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at the Data.

By Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel. They are labor economists and authors of the forthcoming book “In Person: How Working Together Fuels Creativity, Productivity, and Growth.” Excerpts:

"Despite its advantages, remote work has significantly deepened Americans’ isolation and distress."

"remote work explains a third of the deterioration in mental health between 2011 and 2024."

"Our study compares workers in jobs that could be done remotely, such as finance and software engineering, with workers in jobs that must be done in person. People in remote-capable jobs worked from home three times as often in 2024 as in 2019. As they did, their days became far more solitary. Eighty-four percent of remote workers spend their workday entirely alone. Over half report feeling less connected to their colleagues. Even when communicating online, people working from home receive less feedback from their co-workers and contact fewer people outside their immediate teams."

"These workers did not compensate by socializing more outside work."

"In one study, when commuters were instructed to connect with a stranger near them, they reported being happier than those who continued in silence as usual"

"workers in jobs that can be remote saw steeper increases in distress, mental health visits and prescriptions for antidepressants than other workers did."

"People who lived with their spouse and kids saw their mental health hold fairly steady, while those who lived alone experienced a 20 percent decrease in mental well-being. Overall, we found that the rise of remote work increased distress by 7 percent, which accounts for a third of the total increase over the 13-year period we measured."

"remote work’s costs are subtle and slow. When loneliness sets in gradually, it is natural to blame other life changes"

"Our brains are wired to connect face-to-face, and even the most advanced digital tools are a poor substitute. To maintain this critical source of connection, workers need doses of in-person time with one another."

Also see The effects of remote work on the disability employment gap: A rise in work from home explains most of the post pandemic gain in full-time employment among people with physical disabilities by Tyler Smith. He summarizes work by Nicholas Bloom, Gordon B. Dahl, and Dan-Olof Rooth.

There were also some interesting letters to the NY Times about the Harrington and Emanuel article. See Must We Really Come Into the Office?

Related posts:

Want a Promotion? Try to Not Be So Remote 

Can America’s Cities Make a Post-Pandemic Comeback? (interview with Glaeser)

Companies Start to Think Remote Work Isn’t So Great After All

Since people feel more disorganized and chaotic when they are at home, should business leaders take this into account when they consider whether to make remote working the norm after the pandemic subsides?

Remote work is surprisingly productive (for now, but what about in the long-run?)  

Does a Raise or Remote Work Sound Better?  

With No Commute, Americans Simply Worked More During Coronavirus  

Work Flexibility, Popular With Employees, Is Hardly a Holy Grail  

Remote Work Is the New Signing Bonus

Is there a chip shortage?

A shortage is when the quantity demanded is greater than the quantity supplied and the price is below equilibrium. It does not simply mean that the equilibrium quantity demanded is lower than it used to be or that past customers are not able to buy as much as they had been at a price that was lower than what it is now.

This looks like price has gone up for chips because demand has increased due to AI companies entering the market. I explain below with a graph.

See The Memory-Chip Crisis Is Here—and You’re Footing the Bill: Prices are rising on smartphones, game consoles, laptops and more by Robbie Whelan of The WSJ (Appeared in the June 22, 2026, print edition as 'Shortage Of Chips Drives Up Prices of Devices'.). Excerpts:

"Want a sleek new Microsoft Surface Pro laptop? The latest models start at $1,599, or $600 more than the previous generation, the PC maker said this past week."

"From smartphones to the Sony PS5 Pro (which rose in price to $900 from $750 in April) to PCs, buyers of consumer electronics are getting hit."

"The primary driver is the skyrocketing cost of memory and storage chips"

"These chips are the same ones craved by artificial-intelligence companies"

So the demand for chips has increased. That does not mean that we have a shortage. This graph illustrates what has happened followed by my explanation. 

 

Suppose the black line is the first demand line. P and Q are both 10. But then AI companies enter the market, shifting the demand line to the right by 4 because they buy 4 chips (or maybe 4 million). The equilibrium quantity only rises from 10 (million) to 12 (million). If the AI companies buy 4 million chips that leaves only 8 million for the customers who were in the market before. 

This might seem like a shortage to them because they are getting fewer chips than they used to and the price is higher. But we have price where supply and demand intersect (P= 12) and quantity demanded equals quantity supplied. 

Also notice that before the demand increase at a price of 12 quantity demanded would have been 8, exactly what the pre-existing customers are now getting. Disappointing for them, but they are being outbid by the AI companies. 

Related posts on supply and demand and shortages:

Is There An Aluminum Shortage? (2026) 

Is There A Memory-Chip Shortage? (2026) 

Is there a mechanic shortage? (2026)

Does Boeing face a shortage of a temperature-regulating part? (2024) 

Drug Shortages in America Reach a Record High (2024)

Is There A Booze Shortage? (2022)

Car makers face ‘chipageddon’ (2021)  

Does the U.S. have a firefighter shortage (2021) 

There is no truck driver shortage in the US (2021)

Chicken Shortage Sends Prices Soaring, and Restaurants Can’t Keep Up (2021)

Is there a shortage of homes? (2020)

What Chocolate Shortage? Cocoa Prices Steady as Record Output Projected (2019)

Is there really a shortage of construction workers (2019) 

Was there really a shortage of meatless burgers? (2019)  

Is There A Christmas Tree Shortage? (2017)  

Is There Really A Honey Bee Shortage? (2013)

Will There Be A Pumpkin Shortage This Year? (2011)

Students Are Using a ‘Backdoor’ to Attend Their Dream Schools

High-school grads move to college towns, enroll in online programs and build social life outside regular admissions route

By Roshan Fernandez of The WSJ. 

The links to related posts below are all about the extreme measures and costs that students and their families are willing to incur to get into the college of their choice. So it is interesting that now there might be a lower cost option.

Excerpts:

"Students who don’t get into major public flagships the traditional way are still participating in the social life of these campuses. The small-but-mighty group is moving to college towns, enrolling in online programs or nearby community colleges, living in private housing, joining Greek life, and attending game-day tailgates."

"The programs can be a savvy way for universities to protect their rankings and generate revenue, said Adam Nguyen, founder of admissions-consulting firm Ivy Link. These are often students who narrowly missed the admissions cutoff."

"Some schools dispute that characterization. The goal of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s dual-enrollment program with a nearby community college is to provide affordability for students and smooth an otherwise complex transfer process, administrators said."

"Justin Helman didn’t get his dream acceptance from the University of Florida. But that isn’t stopping him from pursuing the classic college experience there.

The recent high-school graduate from Park Ridge, N.J., is set to move into a private apartment right by campus. He is enrolling in a UF online program for the first few semesters and paying an extra fee package to access services like the campus gym and student-section football-game tickets. He plans to study at the library, join clubs and might rush a fraternity." 

Related posts:

For College Applicants, Pressure to Make Summers Count Has Gotten Even Worse: Teens scramble to specialize their summer pursuits early—to convey a ‘story’ to college admissions officers (2026) 

The Guru Who Says He Can Get Your 11-Year-Old Into Harvard (big lesson: Optimize childhood ): Jamie Beaton’s Crimson Education offers a pricey, yearslong boot camp preparing kids to apply to the Ivy League. Parents, and Wall Street, are on board (2024) 

"Independent education consultants" help high school students and their parents navigate the competitive college-admissions process (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2024) 

Students: Make a mistake on purpose, its good for you! (2007) 

This may sound surprising, but counselors advocate making a mistake on your college applications like an intentional typo. This makes you seem more "authentic." Too often all students look slick and identical. They got good grades, test scores, were on teams, did volunteer work, etc., all with the idea of getting into college. But is that who you really are if you do it just to impress the college? That is why counselors suggest making mistakes. Then your application makes you seem like a more real person, not too good to be true. Of course, colleges project an image, too with their pictures of the nicest parts of the campus and groups of smiling students in their catalogues to make you want to go their. Seems like everyone is trying to impress everyone else with an image.

Is knowledge of fashion history a new status symbol?

See Is the Luxury Handbag’s Heyday Ending? An $8 billion slide in sales shows attitudes toward designer bags are changing by Carol Ryan of The WSJ.  

I have several links below on what Thorstein Veblen called Conspicuous Consumption. That is when rich people "purchase goods and services to display one’s economic power and social status." Adam Smith also said something like this. 

But now knowledge of fashion history might be a more powerful status symbol. See the text in red in the excerpts below:

"Status symbols are an odd thing. Some purchases, like a mansion, have never lost their power to flaunt wealth. Pineapples—which were once so rare and expensive that they became the 17th century’s equivalent of the Birkin—fell out of fashion as soon as rising supply meant the middle classes could afford them too."

"Sales of luxury bags are down almost 10% from peaks seen in 2023"

"brands raised prices too aggressively during the pandemic"

"Luxury companies released 80% fewer new bags between 2023 and 2025 than they did between 2016 and 2019"

"Social-media feeds are flooded with images of once-scarce bags like the Hermès Birkin and the Chanel Classic Flap, which has killed some of the magic."

"“You are selling the promise of exclusivity. Anything that creates visibility is not necessarily good,” says Luca Solca, luxury goods analyst at Bernstein."

"shoppers are still obsessed with luxury handbags, but their tastes are evolving in ways that are unhelpful for luxury companies’ profits."

"Social-media content about affordable ways to access luxury handbags through resale and rental platforms like Vivrelle is up sharply"

"carrying a vintage luxury bag is becoming cooler than buying new. In May, searches for vintage bags were up 131% compared with the same month of 2025" 

"Vintage is gaining popularity because of growing disenchantment with modern, mass-produced luxury, according to Silvia Bellezza, an associate professor of marketing at Columbia Business School." 

"buying vintage is a way to look different in an era of algorithm-driven fashion trends. Buying vintage also requires knowledge of fashion history, which is emerging as a new status symbol itself."

Also see Veblen Goods by Andrew Loo of CFI (Corporate Finance Institute) . Excerpts:

"Veblen good is a type of luxury good named after American economist Thorstein Veblen. It shows a positive relationship between price and demand [it should say quantity demanded-CM], and thus an upward-sloping demand curve.

The demand [it should say quantity demanded-CM] for a Veblen good rises (drops) when its price increases (decreases). A Veblen good generally is considered a high-quality exclusive product and a status symbol. When the price goes higher, its status symbol makes the Veblen good more desirable to consumers with high social and economic standing. Some common examples of Veblen goods include luxury cars, wines, handbags, fine jewelry and watches and even sneakers."

"Conspicuous consumption is another relevant concept of Veblen goods. It represents the purchase of goods and services to display one’s economic power and social status, motivated by the desire for prestige.

The concept of conspicuous consumption was also identified by Thorstein Veblen in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). In the practices of conspicuous consumption, a higher price makes a product more desirable for its status symbol, which explains the features of Veblen goods from a sociological perspective."

Adam Smith may have beaten Veblen to the punch. In The Wealth of Nations, he wrote:

"With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. In their eyes the merit of an object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful, is greatly enhanced by its scarcity, or by the great labour which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but themselves. Such objects they are willing to purchase at a higher price than things much more beautiful and useful, but more common." (the entire book is online)

In Veblen's chapter on "Conspicuous Consumption," there is no mention of Adam Smith. 

There is statistical or empircal evidence that supports Veblen's theory. A Ph. D. student found that rich families do spend more on "Conspicuous Consumption." 

See also Doctoral Thesis Says Rich People Spend More on Conspicuous Things. Excerpts:

"Ori Heffetz, a doctoral student in economics at Princeton University (back in 2005-now he is a professor at Cornell University), has developed the first broad-gauged index of product visibility. Sure enough, he finds in his thesis that conspicuous items make up a greater share of the consumption budget in wealthier families."

"Mr. Heffetz estimated the relationship between the amount spent on each of 29 products and a household's income, using data on 3,924 households from the 1997 Consumer Expenditure Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The "income elasticity of demand," defined as the percentage change in consumption for a 1 percent increase in income, summarizes the degree to which a good is a luxury or a necessity. A good is a luxury if a 1 percent increase in income is associated with more than a 1 percent increase in consumption of that good.

Mr. Heffetz's analysis indicates that the higher the visibility of a good, the more likely it is to be a luxury item. For example, spending on cars and jewelry, two highly visible items, rises as a share of a household's budget as its income rises, while spending on home utilities, an inconspicuous category, falls as a share of the budget as income rises."

Related posts:

Is there InConspicuous Consumption? (2025) (what if rich people spend their money and they don't want to be seen doing it)

Is there InConspicuous Consumption? (Part 2) (2025) (links to some research on this concept)

What if you had to spend alot of money just to be offered the chance buy a luxury item? (2025) 

Has Luxury Lost Its Shine? Customers are complaining that they are getting less bang for their buck at the luxury store (a case of Veblen goods) (2024)  

Is Starbucks coffee no longer a Veblen good? (2024)

China's Government Cracks Down On Displays Of Wealth On Social Media (2022)  

(See In China, Bragging About Your Wealth Can Get You Censored: Online posts by users showing off their receipts, over-ordering food or scattering money have been deemed vulgar. Regulators say such content leads young people astray by Vivian Wang and Joy Dong of The New York Times.)

Payless sold its discount shoes for $600 a pair at mock luxury influencer event (2018)

Federal Reserve Economists May Have Discovered Another Cause Of Bankruptcy (if a neighbor wins the lottery people start spending more on consumption to keep up) (2016)

Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Virtue, Thorstein Veblen (and Adam Smith, too!) (2007)

Have market forces eroded Apple's monopsony power for chips?

To see how monopsony works graphically, see the Wikipedia article. Monopsony means one buyer (whereas monopoly means one seller). Similar to what happens in monopoly where the price is higher than in competition and the quantity produced is lower, in monopsony less is produced and sellers get a lower price because the one buyer has market power.

And that is something that Apple has been accused of. See Apple Is America’s Semiconductor Problem. Excerpt:

"Apple’s sheer size as a buyer puts this into perspective. In 2022, Apple bought $67 billion of semiconductor chips, a full 11% of the global market for chips across all industries. Apple buys a far larger share of smartphone and computer semiconductors, given that it accounts for half of global smartphones sales and earns 85% of all smartphones profits. Apple’s supply agreements with U.S. mobile operators demand that Apple products get the deepest subsidies and the largest share of sales."

But the recent increase in demand for chips for AI purposes means that there are many more buyers and it looks like Apple's influence is decreasing. See Apple to Raise Prices Due to Memory Chip Crunch, Tim Cook Says: The CEO tells the Journal in an exclusive interview that soaring costs make price increases ‘unavoidable’ by Rolfe Winkler of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Apple plans to raise prices on its products to offset the surging costs of memory and storage chips, Chief Executive Tim Cook said"

"“There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,” said Cook. “We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That’s the bottom line.”" (there is less supply for Apple)

"Memory companies are building more factories: Morgan Stanley forecasts that production capacity for DRAM wafers, the silicon discs on which chips are patterned, will grow 30% by 2027. Yet as suppliers prioritize the specialized AI memory, wafers for consumer tech will fall up to 15% short of demand, Morgan Stanley estimates." (so if there is more demand now with more buyers more will be produced meaning the monopsony power is being reduced)

"Companies that make PCs, game consoles, smartphones and more have raised prices"

"Morgan Stanley estimates a 15% bump for prices of smartphones and PCs in the U.S. this year."

"It is unclear how Apple could match, let alone beat, the deal terms that AI hyperscalers are offering to lock up supply. Those companies are signing three-to-five year agreements with huge cash prepayments that Apple is unlikely willing to match"

"Historically it has used its heft to wring the lowest prices out of suppliers, playing them off each other and leaving them little profit. As AI companies have stormed into the market, suddenly Apple has to wait in line." 

This last passage shows that Apple had some monopsony power that is decreasing since they used to be able to play suppliers off each other with little profit (meaning a low price as monopsony predicts) but now they have to wait in line because there are more buyers they have to compete with. 

Europe’s Arms Race Is Creating Boomtowns. Why Are Locals So Unhappy? (and an example of why labor supply curves slope upward)

New investment in French and British towns brings jobs but sparks division and resentment

By Sune Engel Rasmussen of The WSJ. 

Sometimes when there is a new product or government policy that leads to higher incomes for some locals but not all it stirs up conflicts. This seems like another example of that. 

Excerpts:

"In Barrow-in-Furness (in UK), an impoverished shipbuilding town in northwestern England, a multibillion-dollar contract to build nuclear submarines has highlighted inequality and pulled workers from other professions.

Residents of Bergerac, a cobblestoned French town famous for its wines, complain that all they have received from a revamped explosives factory are empty promises and drones in their skies."

"But the salaries and benefits offered by BAE draw workers from other professions, leaving the town bereft of mechanics, driving instructors and nurses. On a recent evening in a local pub, two builders asked other patrons for recommendations for tradesmen and were told they had to wait several weeks."

"The sudden influx of money and workers has sent real-estate prices soaring. Some housing has been converted into rental properties shared between several households."

"After the war began in Ukraine, the explosives manufacturer Eurenco invested 200 million euros, or about $230 million, to revive French gunpowder production at a government-owned site on the outskirts of Bergerac.

The factory now employs 600 people, up from 200 before the Ukraine war. Its annual revenue has tripled to €580 million from around €190 million over the same period."

"So far Bergerac has seen little of that money, according to local officials. Many Eurenco employees come from out of town"

This is because the process "requires specialized engineering skills that aren’t present in Bergerac." 

"“I would prefer that the jobs were created in schools and hospitals, that they put money toward health and education,” said Mathieu Brand, co-president of La Traverse, a community-driven cultural center."

The part in red above illustrates the issue with labor supply curves. Why do they slope upward?

1. As W increases, workers from other industries enter the market in question, so L increases. When W increases, we assume it increases in one market only. For example, if the wage paid to janitors increases, convenience store clerks will apply to become janitors.

2. As W increases, nonworkers enter the market in question. Some workers who were not previously working in any market, will start to apply for jobs if the wage rises high enough. Examples might be stay at home spouses and students.

So number one is at work here in this article.

Related posts:

Come Make $100,000, the Billboard Says: Police Departments Are Hustling For Recruits (especially when wages are rising for other jobs) (2024) (this article has a more detailed look at labor supply curves)

Two examples of wages rising for one occupation leading workers to move into it from other occupations (2024) 

Inter-industry competition can affect labor markets (2023) (this was about an auto related company in Alabama that was not only competing for workers with other firms in its industry but also with restaurants and retailers)

What ends expansions? (or what causes recessions according to Alan Blinder and Austan Goolsbee)

I originally posted this in 2019. The two articles excerpted here are both from 2019.

See The Obama-Trump Economic Boom: The current expansion may soon be America’s longest, and neither inflation nor tariffs are likely to stop it by Alan S. Blinder. He is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. Excerpts:

"A common answer in the modern era is that the Federal Reserve clamps down to fight inflation. But today inflation remains quiescent despite extremely low unemployment. That the Fed didn’t raise interest rates in January, even with the federal-funds rate barely above inflation, suggests that Jerome Powell may be an even more dovish Fed chair than Janet Yellen. It sure doesn’t look as if an overzealous Fed will squelch the expansion.

Another common expansion killer, though not lately, is a spike in the price of oil. Predicting the price of oil is a fool’s errand, and I won’t try. But a jump to, say, $90 or $100 a barrel doesn’t look likely any time soon."

Lots of people are fretting about a full-scale trade war with China. That remains possible—and a threat to the world trade system. But would it derail the U.S. expansion? Not unless it’s a whopper. Exports to China are only about 1% of U.S. gross domestic product. Even if they fell by half—well, you can do the math. America’s total exports to all countries are vastly larger. But lately, our bellicose president doesn’t sound inclined to declare trade war on Canada. Let’s hope it stays that way.

According to legend, stock-market crashes often end booms, but that’s an exaggeration. A crash may have to coincide with some other financial calamity, as in the banking, bond and mortgage disasters of 2008-09. In contrast, the U.S. economy sailed right through the megacrash of 1987. The current expansion has already survived a market “correction” in December without much apparent damage. So while I never predict stock prices, a market crash ranks low on my expansion worry list.

Last but certainly not least, expansions are sometimes killed by sudden drops in either consumer or business confidence—or rather by the declines in spending that such drops engender. Might that happen in the next few months? I suppose so, but recent economic data don’t point in that direction.

Recent political “data” are a different matter. It is certainly possible that the U.S. will find itself in a full-fledged constitutional crisis in the coming months, precipitated by, say, the “national emergency” over immigration. What then? If business managers and market traders behave like Mr. Trump’s base, they’ll shrug it off: Constitution, shmonstitution. But if threats to democracy shake confidence, look out.

A low probability, you say? I agree. My bet is that the current expansion will sail through June, setting a new record."

See also You Never Know When a Recession Will Sneak Up on You by Austan Goolsbee. He a professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and was an adviser to President Barack Obama. Goolsbee seems to think a recession is more likely than Blinder and that an unforseen event that hurts confidence is more likely. Excerpts:

"recessions don’t come only from large, foreseeable events. Modest, unpredictable incidents can cause economic downturns if they lead businesses or consumers to freak out."

Seemingly small events can cause enormous problems. Think back to 2001 and the last recession of a “normal” size. (The recession that started in December 2007 was, by far, the deepest and longest since the Great Depression — about as far from normal as a recession can be.)

The 2001 recession developed when the internet bubble popped, or at least that’s how we tend to remember it. But go back and check the numbers. The internet accounted for, at most, about 2 percent of the economy then. If we use the logic we’ve been applying to trade wars and government shutdowns, it would seem that popping the internet bubble shouldn’t have been enough to cause a recession. But it did.

The reason it did was that the pop freaked out people outside just the internet sector. Consumer confidence plunged, and businesses stopped investing. The recession spread far beyond its origin.

In this sense, virtually every recession in the last 40 years coincided with a signal of fear, like a significant drop in consumer confidence. Sometimes confidence fell and didn’t spiral into recession, but all recessions have started with a confidence spiral."

"Another government shutdown could spiral into something far more damaging than the small decline in workers’ share of the economy that the simple math suggests. An escalating trade war with China could ignite a recession, even if the numbers show that trade isn’t a large share of the United States economy. These events just need to spook consumers or businesses into putting off spending, and then more dire consequences can start to snowball."

"If something scares people enough, it can start a recession, and you probably won’t know until it’s too late.

That’s because recessions are hard to recognize at the start. Looking back, for example, we know that a recession officially began in April 2001, yet scarcely anyone understood that then. In June 2001, only 7 percent of economists in the monthly Blue Chip survey believed a recession was underway. In the months before that 2001 recession began, only 16 percent of economists expected that a recession would start within the next year. Now, 25 percent of economists in a Wall Street Journal survey say they expect a recession within the next year, and anxiety seems to be growing." 

Related posts:

‘Recession’ Review: A Series of Unfortunate Economic Events: In their efforts to explain downturns, economists tend to connect unrelated data and occurrences. How forecastable are recessions?  

Monetary Policy and the Great Crash of 1929: A Bursting Bubble or Collapsing Fundamentals? (By Timothy Cogley of New York University) 

What Causes Recessions? What Do Recessions Look Like? (by Scott A. Wolla of the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank)

Some Bad News for Good News — Optimistic Forecasts Create Recessions

What ends expansions? (or what causes recessions according to Alan Blinder and Austan Goolsbee)

Are business cycles imbedded in longer cycles called financial cycles?

The Job That AI Was Supposed to Kill Needs More Humans Than Ever

Court reporters outmatch the technology in skill, but the profession faces another crisis: a shortage of workers

By Allison Pohle of The WSJ. 

So far it seems like it is more a case of the technology being brought in because there are not enough workers than the technology simply replacing workers.

As for the "shortage" of reporters, it might be true that there are fewer of them due to retirements. But if supply shifts to the left the price (or in this case the wage) would rise. Fewer reporters would be employed at a higher price. But the quantity demanded would equal the quantity supplied. But if these are government jobs, the wage might not be allowed to fully adjust to market conditions (and if the wage was not fully determined by market conditions in the first place maybe the term shortage is not appropriate in this case). 

Excerpts:

"The profession has become an example of AI’s limitations in replacing human skill in the real world. In an actual courtroom, court reporters record nonverbal cues like gestures and transcribe through distracting courtroom noises like coughs or door slams. Other times, they must gently ask witnesses to repeat themselves while recounting traumatic testimony."

"The threat isn’t that AI can do the job better, legal professionals say. It’s that too few humans are going into the field. A long-brewing shortage has worsened as more stenographers retire and too few newcomers complete the rigorous training to replace them."

"Instead of relying solely on traditional court reporters, more courts are allowing “digital” reporters to operate the recording equipment and certify transcripts."

"North Dakota phased out using stenographers this year and switched to recording all proceedings. The lack of court reporters is one reason."

"The National Court Reporters Association says AI-assisted transcription remains prone to errors. “Nobody can take over the integrity that we bring,” says Cindy Isaacsen, the association’s president."

"Others counter that the technology is improving" 

Related posts:

AI startups are literally paying people to fold their laundry (or perform similar chores) (2025)

"Companies such as Encord, Micro1, and Scale AI have launched paid “data collection” programs aimed at generating real-world video datasets for robotic learning." 

America’s Newest Auto Plant Is Full of Robots. It Still Needs the Human Touch: Hyundai’s sprawling complex in Georgia illustrates advanced manufacturing’s balance between people and machines (2025) 

No, AI Robots Won’t Take All Our Jobs: Instead, they will boost productivity, lower prices and spur the evolution of the labor market (2025) (it also has links to 14 other related posts from before 2024)

IBM CEO Says AI Has Replaced Hundreds of Workers but Created New Programming, Sales Jobs: The tech company promises higher total employment as it reinvests resources toward roles like software development (2025)

Technological Disruption in the Labor Market (2025)

Why AI Might Not Take All Our Jobs—if We Act Quickly (2025)

Some good news on productivity (2025) (AI is mentioned)

Some economics of A.I. (2025) 

The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work (2024)

Two recent articles on robots and human workers (2024)

Self-service kiosks at McDonald’s are not reducing employment (2024) 

Robots writing science fiction (2024)

Amazon’s New Robotic Warehouse Will Rely Heavily on Human Workers (2024)

Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs: Evidence shows increased productivity leads to more wealth, cheaper goods, greater spending power and ultimately, more jobs (2016) 

"Since the 1970s, when automated teller machines arrived, the number of bank tellers in America has more than doubled. James Bessen, an economist who teaches at Boston University School of Law, points to that seeming paradox amid new concerns that automation is “stealing” human jobs. To the contrary, he says, jobs and automation often grow hand in hand."

"Sometimes, of course, machines really do replace humans, as in agriculture and manufacturing"

"a long trail of empirical evidence shows that the increased productivity brought about by automation and invention ultimately leads to more wealth, cheaper goods, increased consumer spending power and ultimately, more jobs.

In the case of bank tellers, the spread of ATMs meant bank branches could be smaller, and therefore, cheaper. Banks opened more branches, and in total employed more tellers, Mr. Bessen says. 

The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work: AI that can predict how specific humans will look, act and feel could do the jobs of fashion models, focus group members and clinical trial participants (2024)

 

Meet the Robots Slicing Your Barbecue Ribs (2024)

 

Robots writing science fiction (2024)

 

Robots Are Looking Better to Detroit as Labor Costs Rise (2024)

 

Are robot vehicles replacing workers in freight yards, warehouses and seaports or are they being used because it is hard to find workers? (2023)

 

Rent a robot for Christmas? Makes sense if you are a logistics company (2022)

Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor Market Adjusted to the Mechanization of Telephone Operation (2022)

Warehouses Look to Robots to Fill Labor Gaps, Speed Deliveries  (2021)

Is Walmart adding robots to replace workers or because it is hard to find workers? (2019)

Did iPhones reduce fertility? Two views

See Is the iPhone Birth Control? Causal Evidence from AT&T’s 2007–2011 Carrier Monopoly by Caitlin K. Myers & Ezekiel Hooper.

"The U.S. general fertility rate has fallen by 22% since 2007, a sustained decline not readily explained by economic conditions, contraceptive use, housing or childcare costs, or other commonly cited factors. We assess the potential role of a different shock: the diffusion of the smartphone. The U.S. rollout of the iPhone, the first modern smartphone, provides a natural experiment: from June 2007 through February 2011, the device was sold only on AT&T, allowing us to identify its effect from variation in AT&T’s mobile broadband coverage. Entropy-balanced Poisson and synthetic difference-in-differences event studies imply that access to the iPhone reduced births by 4.5–8.0% at ages 15–19 and 3.2–6.6% at ages 20–24, with statistically significant but smaller declines among older cohorts. Placebo analyses applied to Verizon and Sprint’s pre-2011 coverage footprint are null. Taken together, these cohort effects imply that the diffusion of the iPhone deepened the decline in births among women under 30 while suppressing the rise in births among older women. Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44. National-survey evidence on time use and sexual behavior is consistent with the iPhone reducing in-person interactions, increasing pornography use, and reducing sexual frequency."

Also see A simple reason for skepticism about the iPhones/fertility link by Tyler Cowen.

"Here is the background to the debate.  Here is more from Noah.  Here is a thread from researcher Caitlin Myers.  And here is some basic information:

In 2008, 1.9% is the share of the mobile-subscribing population with an iPhone wireless subscription.  As a percent of all adults that is 1.6%.

In 2009, it is 4.3%.  3.6% of all adults.

In 2010, 6.8%.  5.5% of all adults.

Plus conception to birth takes nine months (give or take!), noting that actual family planning may make this lag far longer.  In 2008 fertility rates already were falling pretty sharply.  The whole “maybe the iPhone messes up your dating processes” factor also requires some time to operate, especially since iPhones as a network of many many users, and whatever negative effects on socializing you think that might have, was still to lie in the future.  And what you could access on the iPhone then was far more limited than today.

So when the authors talk about diffusion explaining 33–52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among American women 15–44, I still do not get how that is supposed to operate.

The explanations I am hearing seem to be parasitic on world intuitions from 2026, not the time period under consideration."

Driverless Trucks Are Here—and They’re Delivering Bags of Doritos (plus backlash aganist robotaxis)

PepsiCo has 41 trucks on the road in Arizona, Texas and Arkansas, bringing the technology into the mainstream

By Esther Fung of The WSJ. Excerpts:

[there are] "35 driverless trucks Pepsi is running on Arizona roads"

"At least nine autonomous-truck companies are operating in Southern and South-Central states, especially Texas, but many still have human monitors at the wheel"

"The truck has multiple cameras mounted at the front and back, as well as radar and lidar equipment that help determine what’s on the road."

"The trucks have had no accidents on public roads so far"

"the driverless trucks are more reliable than human drivers. The on-time arrival performance from driverless trucks reached 99%"

"The driverless trucks perform best when they shuttle back and forth in repetitive trips"

"PepsiCo employs thousands of drivers in the U.S., some represented by unions that have strongly opposed the rollout of autonomous trucks. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has lobbied several states to require a trained human operator in any autonomous vehicle used to deliver commercial goods."

Also see Robotaxis Are Spreading Across the U.S.—and So Is the Backlash by Sean McLain of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"The Boston City Council has debated putting restrictions on robotaxis, supported by labor unions fearful of losing driver jobs. In Seattle, home of some of the biggest technology companies, robotaxi operators have been hit by protests."

I had a related post recently that touched on this kind of issue. I used a book called The Economics Of Macro Issues by Daniel Benjamin and Roger LeRoy Miller. It mentioned Luddites, people who destroyed industrial equipment in England in the early 1800s. They were weavers who lost their jobs to new machinery. 

See The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam. 

Related posts:

When Humanoid Robots Come to a Small-Town Factory: Two-legged robots have taken over a job in a South Carolina auto parts plant. That’s just the start (2026)

AI startups are literally paying people to fold their laundry (or perform similar chores) (2025)

"Companies such as Encord, Micro1, and Scale AI have launched paid “data collection” programs aimed at generating real-world video datasets for robotic learning." 

America’s Newest Auto Plant Is Full of Robots. It Still Needs the Human Touch: Hyundai’s sprawling complex in Georgia illustrates advanced manufacturing’s balance between people and machines (2025) 

No, AI Robots Won’t Take All Our Jobs: Instead, they will boost productivity, lower prices and spur the evolution of the labor market (2025) (it also has links to 14 other related posts from before 2024)

IBM CEO Says AI Has Replaced Hundreds of Workers but Created New Programming, Sales Jobs: The tech company promises higher total employment as it reinvests resources toward roles like software development (2025)

Technological Disruption in the Labor Market (2025)

Why AI Might Not Take All Our Jobs—if We Act Quickly (2025)

Some good news on productivity (2025) (AI is mentioned)

Some economics of A.I. (2025) 

The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work (2024)

Two recent articles on robots and human workers (2024)

Self-service kiosks at McDonald’s are not reducing employment (2024) 

Robots writing science fiction (2024)

Amazon’s New Robotic Warehouse Will Rely Heavily on Human Workers (2024)