# Where the jobs went, and where they go next (slim)

> Vlad Cealicu on two hundred years of machines taking the work of many hands, at sea, on the farm, in the factory, in the telephone exchange and now in the office. Each move was faster than the last, each one moved the work a step up the list of what people need, and the next step is the one the models can't do.

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By Vlad Cealicu, 2 November 2026. 2,333 words, about 10 min to read.

- 70 years: for the US farm to go from 41% of workers to 4%
- 40 years: for US manufacturing to go from 22% of jobs to 9%
- 4 years: for young workers in AI-exposed jobs to fall 19% behind

How long each move took.

I went to a concert of sea shanties last week, and shanties are work songs, written to be sung by crews hauling on ropes, and the crews they were written for mostly don't exist any more, which got me reading about where they went, and then about where everyone else went each time a machine took their work.

As far as I can tell every big shift in where people work in the last two hundred years has gone the same way, a machine does the work that needed a lot of hands, the hands go somewhere else over a generation or two, and the place they went becomes the next normal.

## Starting with the sea

The American whaling fleet peaked in 1846 at 736 ships, each with a crew of about 35, and by 1876 only 39 ships set out (New Bedford sent out its last whaler in 1927) [[1]](#ref-1).

The Cutty Sark sailed with a crew of around 26 [[4]](#ref-4), and on her first trip home from Shanghai she brought back 1.3 million pounds of tea, about 590 tonnes [[5]](#ref-5).

- 131,885: British seamen on sea-trading ships in 1938
- 24,550: UK seafarers active at sea in 2025
- 300: Cutty Sark cargoes in one Ever Given, roughly, with about the same crew

At sea.

## The farm and the factory

The land had emptied long before the ships did.

The United States ran the same change later and faster.

Americans working in agriculture, per 1,000 people in work

| Year | Per 1,000 |
| --- | --- |
| 1900 | 410 |
| 1930 | 215 |
| 1945 | 160 |
| 1970 | 40 |
| 2000 | 19 |

Each series has a zero-based scale.

Around 20% of the world lived in cities in 1950, the UN called the world majority urban in 2007, and around 80% of people now live in cities, towns and suburbs [[13]](#ref-13).

UK manufacturing employment peaked in 1966 at over eight million jobs and was a little over 2.5 million by 2009 [[14]](#ref-14), and between June 1979 and June 2022 the sector lost nearly 4.1 million jobs, the largest fall of any [[15]](#ref-15).

Manufacturing jobs at the peak and after, in thousands

| Where and when | Thousands |
| --- | --- |
| UK, 1966, the peak | 8000 |
| UK, 2009 | 2500 |
| US, June 1979, the peak | 19600 |
| US, June 2019 | 12800 |

Each series has a zero-based scale.

Forty years, and the children of the people on the line went to the office, because that's where the work had moved.

## Faster each time

The example that looks most like what's happening now is smaller and sharper, and it's the telephone exchange.

And the office has data now.

So it took about a century for the sea, seventy years for the farm, forty for the factory, twenty for the exchange, and four so far for the office.

How long each move took, the office so far

| Who | Time | Outcome |
| --- | --- | --- |
| The sea | about a century | whaling gone, British crews down four fifths |
| The farm, in the US | 1900 to 1970 | from 41% of workers to 4% |
| The factory, in the US | 1979 to 2019 | from 22% of jobs to 9% |
| The telephone exchange | 1920 to 1940 | operators down 50 to 80% where switching arrived |
| The office | November 2022 to now | young workers in exposed jobs 19% behind, still going |

Time on a log scale.

## Where the jobs went

If you put the moves next to each other the direction is the same every time.

The farm was the bottom rung, food.

Where the hands went, one rung at a time

1. **The farm** (machines took it). Food, the bottom rung. The tractor, the combine and fertiliser took it.
2. **The factory** (blocked). Clothes, housing, heat and tools, the stuff of safety and comfort. Machines and cheaper countries took it.
3. **The office** (the models are taking it). Insurance, banking, law and admin, and the coordination that runs everything else.
4. **What comes next** (where the hands go next). Love and belonging, esteem, getting good at something. Care, teaching, the trades, live music, the small business run by someone you can name.

The models are taking the office rung now, reading, deciding and writing, which is most of what the middle of the ladder is made of, so the hands move up again, and the rungs above are love and belonging, esteem and self-actualisation.

So my guess is that the next big employer is each other, care for the old, which is the one job we know grows no matter what, teaching in person, the trades that fix the house you live in, live music and live anything, and the small businesses run by someone you can name, who makes money from the product and not from your attention.

There are two catches though.

## Is the learning curve steeper?

Yes, and there's research behind it, because Benjamin Jones looked at US patents in a 2009 paper and found that the age at which inventors make their first invention rose by about two thirds of a year per decade, that inventors specialise more narrowly as time goes on, about 6% more per decade, and that the average team on a patent grew from 1.73 people in 1975 to 2.33 by the end of the 1990s, a 35% increase [[23]](#ref-23).

- 0.66 years: older at a first invention, every decade
- 6%: narrower specialisation, every decade
- 35%: bigger teams on a patent, 1975 to the late 1990s

Benjamin Jones, 2009, on US patents.

The models go the other way.

## We'll figure it out

Every one of these moves looked like the end of something to the people inside it, and every one of them ended with more people in work than before, doing things that the people who lost the old work couldn't have described.

---

More in [Opinion](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/opinion/index.md) · Older opinion [We already have AI judges, but not at the top courts yet](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/ai-judges-not-at-the-top-courts-yet.md)

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## References

Read on 2 November 2026. Quotes are as published.

[1] Wikipedia, "Whaling in the United States".

[2] Sir William P.

[3] Department for Transport, 25 February 2026, "Seafarers in the UK shipping industry 2025".

[4] Royal Museums Greenwich, "Crew on Cutty Sark".

[5] Royal Museums Greenwich, "Ten things you should know" about Cutty Sark.

[6] TradeWinds, 29 April 2021, "Three crew members to switch out from Ever Given amid detention".

[7] Wikipedia, "Evergreen G-class container ship".

[8] Stephen Broadberry, Bruce M.

[9] Wikipedia, "1851 United Kingdom census", citing Christian and Annal, "Census, The Expert Guide", The National Archives, 2008. Source for the census being designed to measure migration from rural to urban areas and confirming "a significant shift from the countryside to the towns".

[10] OECD Main Economic Indicators via FRED, "Employment, Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing, Total for United Kingdom".

[11] Office for National Statistics, 20 October 2026, "Employment in the UK".

[12] Carolyn Dimitri, Anne Effland and Neilson Conklin, June 2005, "The 20th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy", USDA Economic Research Service, EIB-3, box "Farming's changing role in the Nation's economy".

[13] Our World in Data, "Urbanization", citing the UN World Urbanization Prospects 2025 and the UN national-definition series.

[14] Stephen Nickell, 25 August 2010, "Number cruncher, manufacturing a decline", Prospect.

[15] Office for National Statistics, Freedom of Information response, "Employment loss by sector 1979 to 2022".

[16] US Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2020, "Forty years of falling manufacturing employment", Beyond the Numbers.

[17] James Feigenbaum and Daniel P.

[18] Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen, 12 August 2026, "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence", Stanford Digital Economy Lab, on ADP payroll data.

[19] A.

[20] Louis Tay and Ed Diener, 2011, "Needs and Subjective Well-Being Around the World", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, on Gallup World Poll data from 123 countries, as reported by the University of Illinois on 29 June 2011. Source for the needs being universal and important to happiness everywhere, and for the order in which they are met having "little bearing" on life satisfaction.

[21] Skills England, 4 August 2026, updated 6 October 2026, "Sector skills needs assessment, health and adult social care".

[22] Vlad Cealicu, 10 May 2026, "A Ghost Should Not Possess", LocalGhost Hard Truths.

[23] Benjamin F.