The European Union is the worlds largest economy, with a combined GDP of approximately 17.5 trillion dollars. Considering this, and the fact that I live in the EU, I begun with looking at statistics from Eurostat, the statistical branch of the European Commission which compiles statistics from all 28 EU members. The first dataset I looked at is the volume of industrial production within the EU, including mining and electricity generation.

Source: Eurostat

The drop in production between 2008 and 2010 is the Eurocrisis, and can be seen in subsequent graphs. Simply looking at this graph does not tell you anything about the role of labour in industry, rather it just presents raw production. Fortunately, Eurostat has compiled a dataset of labour input in industry.

Source: Eurostat

This is where it gets interesting. Between 2002 and 2010, employment in industry dropped by almost 17%, which is quite significant for just eight years. The Eurocrisis plays a role in the drop in employment, but overlaying the two graphs shows that despite the drop in employment, industrial production has not suffered greatly, in fact, between 2000 and 2008, production was steadily increasing while employment was decreasing.

Source: Eurostat

By the early 2010's, industrial production in the EU ceased being dependent on labour, as can be seen in the gap between production and employment, and this gap will only become wider and wider.

It’s obvious that industrial employment in the European Union is on a downwards sloping curve, and that eventually industrial production will be almost entirely automated. However, this is not convincing evidence of technological unemployment. Workers can always shift over to service-oriented jobs, and indeed that is what is happening.

Source: Eurostat

The red curve is the total turnover of service oriented industry in the EU (excluding retail and repair), and the blue curve is service employment. Contrary to the industrial production graphs, jobs in the service sector have not been decreasing, instead they have been steadily increasing. However, by the beginning of the 2010's service sector turnover ceased to be dependent on labour inputs, presumably due to efficiency gains and computerization. Additionally, previous explosive growth in service turnover suggests that the gap between employment and turnover will continue to increase, which is similar to the relationship between industrial production and employment.

It’s obvious that jobs in the industrial sector are decreasing in favor of machines, but can the same be said for the service sector? According to the data above, there is no evidence that service jobs are decreasing, but I’d wager that there will come a time in the near-future where even the service sector is affected by widespread automation. Developments such as IBM’s Watson and Google’s self-driving car are just examples of the kind of thing that could put millions out of jobs, and these developments occured just within the past decade. Additionally, efficiency gains and computerization in the service sector is happening right now and will accelerate as time goes on.

We are slowly entering the robotic revolution, and it is something that will shake up virtually every part of society. It’s obvious that governments around the world need to develop plans on how to handle widespread technological unemployment, or risk economic chaos.