The ‘China Shock’ of the 2000s Says AI Won’t Kill Jobs, Torsten Slok Says

Torsten Sløk, Apollo’s top economist, recommends looking to the early 21st century for clues about what AI might do to the labor market. He’s not talking about comparisons to the dot-com boom, but rather, the impact of China’s manufacturing push on US jobs. In his blog on Tuesday, Sløk recalled the early 2000s when China joined the World Trade Organization, which led to heightened competition for factory jobs around the world as China became more enmeshed with the global economy. But Sløk says the initial decline in US manufacturing jobs was offset by other economic forces such as service sector…