Relax -- robots are not coming for your job

It's tough to peruse the news these days without seeing yet another dystopian warning that robots are coming for your job. This meme even has its own gallows humor, and it's actually pretty good: Eventually there will be one worker left in the world programming all the robots, and his last job will be to write the code that replaces himself. But if this is really happening, where are the robots? On Aug. 9, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that second-quarter productivity declined by 0.5%, the third quarterly decline in a row. Productivity, defined as output per hour, has been weak since 2005, and especially weak since 2010 -- the time frame during which warnings of robots coming for your job have reached a fevered pitch.