Many factory floors can look like lonely places today, if you are a human. The assembly line designed by Henry Ford created jobs for thousands of Americans, but recently those workers have been replaced by machines.

Then:

Now:

There’s a workplace revolution happening now from manufacturing plants to offices. A 2013 report from the Associated Press noted the damage to white-collar jobs:

In the U.S., more than 1.1 million secretaries vanished from the job market between 2000 and 2010, their job security shattered by software that lets bosses field calls themselves and arrange their own meetings and trips. Over the same period, the number of telephone operators plunged by 64 percent, word processors and typists by 63 percent, travel agents by 46 percent and bookkeepers by 26 percent, according to Labor Department statistics.

And people wonder why the recession’s recovery has been jobless. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

Productivity has gone up while employment has decreased in the past 15 years. That fact alone should be a big hint about the effects of robots, computers and automation.

America certainly doesn’t need millions of low-skilled immigrant workers invading the job market, yet Washington acts as if labor needs are the same as 50 years ago. A 2013 Oxford University study (“The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?”) concluded that “about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk” to be replaced by smart machines.

America therefore needs ZERO immigrants to fill jobs. Enlarging the angry jobless underclass is unwise, to say the least.

The businesses that produce industrial robots have been pushing forward, and smart machines have gotten cheaper and as a result are a viable alternative to humans.