Post-work society

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In futurology, political science, and science fiction, a post-work society is a society in which the nature of work has been radically transformed and traditional employment has largely become obsolete due to technological progress.^[1]

Some post-work theorists imagine the complete automation of all jobs, or at least the takeover of all monotonous, rule-based, predictable and repetitive (and thus unworthy of humans) tasks in the future by ultimately cheaper, faster, more efficient, more reliable and more accurate intelligent machines.^[2][3] Additionally, these machines can work in harsher conditions and for longer periods of time without stopping than humans,^[4] which is expected to eventually lead to massive economic growth, despite high rates of ever-increasing human unemployment.^[5] Overall, this development would lead to an enormous increase in prosperity, whereby it would be the task of politics to distribute this wealth evenly within the population.^[6][7]

Future directions include the reshaping of the human role in the workplace, stressing the relative strengths of humans capable of adapting and integrating technology into their work and interaction.^[8] In addition to these capabilities, scholars emphasize the importance of humans taking advantage of these relative strengths, offering several areas which humans can remain competent in a rapidly developing workplace. These include emotional intelligence, service orientation, resource management skills, communication skills, and entrepreneurship skills.^[9]

Scholarly literature defines such areas where machines may surpass humans as "task encroachment".^[10] "Task Encroachment" presents an issue of growing encroachment of AI and automation into human work, especially in manual and cognitive tasks. It is estimated that approximately 40% of all working hours will be affected by AI models.^[11] In a post-work society, such issues imply that humanity must pivot towards roles that require emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills, areas where machines still lag behind. To adapt, humanity should focus on cultivating these uniquely human attributes while societal structures might need to reconsider the value and distribution of work, possibly reducing the reliance on traditional employment as a means of livelihood.

As the nature of work evolves, scholars are examining not only the shifting skill requirements but also the potential need to redefine the purpose and structure of labor itself. Beyond emotional intelligence and service orientation, Bianchini and Maffei ^[12] (2020) argue that design-oriented thinking—focused on adaptability and innovation—is crucial for humans to maintain a role in increasingly automated workplaces. This focus on problem-solving aligns with the idea that humans will become "designers" who bridge the gap between technology and human interaction, allowing workers to apply creativity and adaptability in ways that machines cannot.

In addition, research by Frey and Osborne ^[13] and Deming (2017)^[14] emphasizes the value of interpersonal and "soft" skills as automation advances. Since social skills are less likely to be automated, they offer one of the strongest avenues for sustaining human employment. However, scholars warn that technological advances in affective computing and other AI-driven fields, such as education and healthcare, may eventually challenge even these uniquely human domains, pushing society to reconsider the fundamental structure of work. Lin et al. (2016) illustrate the potential for AI to support or even perform tasks that involve emotional responses, such as teaching or caregiving, raising ethical questions about where AI should be permitted to operate ^[15].

Other theories of a post-work society focus more on challenging the priority of the work ethic, and on the celebration of nonwork activities.^[16]

Near-term practical proposals closely associated with post-work theory include the implementation of a universal basic income,^[17] as well as the reduction of the length of a working day and the number of days of a working week. Increased focus on what post-work society would look like has been driven by reports such as one that states 47% of jobs in the United States could be automated.^[13] Because of increasing automation and the low price of maintaining an automated workforce compared to one dependent on human labor, it has been suggested that post-work societies would also be ones of post-scarcity.^[18][19]

• Kathi Weeks: The problem with work: feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8223-5112-2
• Daniel Susskind: WORLD WITHOUT WORK: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, 2020, ISBN 9781250173515
• Stanley Aranowitz : Post-Work, 1998, ISBN 9780415917834
• Serge Latouche : Travailler moins, travailler autrement, ou ne pas travailler du tout, 2021, ISBN 9782743653729

• Critique of work
• Four-day workweek
• In Praise of Idleness
• Humans Need Not Apply
• Imagination age
• Post-capitalism
• Refusal of work
• Tang ping ("lying flat")
• Technological utopianism
• Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
• The End of Work
• The Future of Work and Death
• Workism

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