text: second half of the 19th century, it became increasingly apparent that technological progress was benefiting all sections of society, including the working class. Concerns over the negative impact of innovation diminished. The term "Luddite fallacy" was coined to describe the thinking that innovation would have lasting harmful effects on employment.    The view that technology is unlikely to lead to long-term unemployment has been repeatedly challenged by a minority of economists. In the early 1800s these included David Ricardo himself. There were dozens of economists warning about technological unemployment during brief intensifications of the debate that spiked in the 1930s and 1960s. Especially in Europe, there were further warnings in the closing two decades of the twentieth century, as commentators noted an enduring rise in unemployment suffered by many industrialised nations since the 1970s. Yet a clear majority of both professional economists and the interested general public held the optimistic view through most of the 20th century.    In the second decade of the 21st century, a number of studies have been released suggesting that technological unemployment may increase worldwide. Oxford Professors Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, for example, have estimated that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of automation. However, their findings have frequently been misinterpreted, and on the PBS NewsHours they again made clear that their findings do not necessarily imply future technological unemployment. While many economists and commentators still argue such fears are unfounded, as was widely accepted for most of the previous two centuries, concern over technological unemployment is growing once again. A report in Wired in 2017 quotes knowledgeable people such as economist Gene Sperling and management professor Andrew McAfee on the idea that handling existing and impending job loss to automation is a "significant issue". Recent technological innovations have the potential to displace humans in the professional, white-collar, low-skilled, creative fields, and other "mental jobs". The World Bank's World