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I wanted to understand how automation hits white collar jobs so I went on a huge research trip into the last time it happened: the 1980s We rarely talk about the mass automation brought about by the PC. But it was massive! Take a look at this map of the most popular job in every US state in 1978. With the exception of truck drivers – for now – every job on that map has been reshaped by automation

10:23 AM · Mar 1, 2026

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Rowland Manthorpe

@rowlsmanthorpe

10h

The job that was hit the hardest is one that’s hardly ever mentioned in accounts of automation: the secretary In 1984, there were 18m clerical and secretarial workers in the US, 18% of the entire workforce. Same in the UK. One in five workers was some kind of secretary. Yet

To find out what this felt like, I asked someone who worked as a secretary during that era: my mum. This is her in London in 1976. (Piles of rubbish on the street. Checks out.) Three years out of secretarial college for typing and shorthand

When my mum left school in 1972, her parents advised her to get a steady job, so she became a secretary. She hated it. It wasn’t just the relentless sexual harassment – ”oh yes, that was the norm” – it was the mind-numbing deference and boredom Then in 1982 she went on maternity

The reason I think this is so relevant to today is because the secretary was the human interface for the mid-century machinery of work. Every single element of information processing required a human hand, and usually that hand was a secretary’s

Now the interface is changing again The computer era unbundled the interface known as “the secretary”. The next era may well rebundle it back into AI

Rowland Manthorpe

@rowlsmanthorpe

10h

Needless to say, this is going to have a big impact on jobs. But when I started investigating how computerisation changed work the impact was more complicated than “we’re cooked” For instance – a lot, even most, secretarial work didn’t actually disappear. It just got spread

Another relevant example – for a time the PC actually *increased* administrative employment. The computer boom produced more work, at greater speed, increasing the need for administrative coordination. It wasn’t until the financial crisis coincided with SaaS that those jobs

Anyway, as you can tell I really went deep on this. The similarities are uncanny. There were even people in the 1980s saying that work was at an end and people would need to figure out what to do with their vastly increased leisure time. (Spoiler alert: they did not)

The full piece is here with lots more. I loved writing this so hopefully it'll be interesting to read 12 lessons for AI from the end of the human interface rowlandmanthorpe.substack.com/p/the-case-of-

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Tom Harwood

@tomhfh

Really interesting! But reminds us how easy it is to absorb massive disruption over the course of decades. Harder to do in single digit years…

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Rowland Manthorpe

@rowlsmanthorpe

That's the worry isn't it. Although of course the arrival of PCs felt incredibly rapid at the time. I can't decide whether we underestimate the amount of friction in our economy or whether it really is going to rip through at 10x speed

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Andrew Bennett

@andrewjb_

Your recent reporting is a reminder of how good it is to see you back at Sky full-time UK tech news / analysis is much better for it

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Rowland Manthorpe

@rowlsmanthorpe

Aw thanks that's very kind

Edward - KF7VY

@coldstreams

Did a bit of a dive into this and yes, about 1 in 5 jobs were secretarial/clerical jobs (typing, filing, etc) - replaced by word processing, databases, and many now doing their own work on a PC vs handing it off to "staff". An estimated 2% of jobs now are secretarial and maybe

391

David Stern

@sterndavidi

In 1990 I told my boss he should put a computer on each consultants desk. He said: I don't want my consultants typing.

446

ReduceReuseRecycle

@abcd123_abcd123

Work processes were not upgraded to take advantage of PCs until the mid to late 90’s. Before than work processes centered around mainframes and paper. Y2K pushed companies to client-server based PC oriented software. The release of Windows 95 & Office 97 were big improvements

The PC parallel is spot-on. In ophthalmology, AI handles screening tasks that once needed specialists. The clinician's role evolves. Oversight remains non-negotiable.

Matthew Wright

@Mattheww6377

In my high school they taught shorthand. Type is still useful for other reasons. Journalists may still use shorthand but thats about it. I occasionally demonstrate it to people at parties. You could do over 200 wpm with Gregg shorthand.

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Ali Bakarkhani

@ashiqeLSD

I love your entire thread because of how expansive it is. Really insightful. What I'm apprehensive about is that this time AI displaces jobs at scales so huge and entire categories as a matter of fact, that we don't know where the surplus labor will be absorbed. 1/2

Propelled young women from Secretaries to Management.

Mitchell Forderer

@mtford41

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peepeepoopoo

@DeepDishEnjoyer

the chatter from the freight trading world is quite bleak, to put it mildly.

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Crémieux

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