Lump of Labor Fallacy
Lump of Labour Fallacy · Fixed Work Fallacy
Mistaken belief that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in an economy, and therefore increasing automation or immigration will lead to higher unemployment, ignoring the potential for new jobs to be created.
Origin
British economist D. F. Schloss identified the fallacy in his 1891 article "Why Working-Men Dislike Piece-Work," arguing that workers who deliberately restricted output were acting on a false assumption that the total amount of labor in an economy is fixed. The idea resurfaced in debates over shorter working hours in the early 20th century, and John Maynard Keynes later challenged it from another angle, suggesting that reducing hours could actually stimulate employment.
Everyday Use
"Robots are going to take all our jobs" assumes there's a fixed pie of work to go around. But every wave of automation — from looms to spreadsheets to AI — has displaced some jobs while creating others nobody predicted. The fallacy shows up whenever people treat employment as a zero-sum game.