Get best of the week

How many jobs robots will destroy


Image source: Tech Talk depositphotos.com

A study by MIT professor Daron Acemoglu shows that every robot in the US eliminates an average of 3.3 jobs, up to 6.6 in individual industries.

It's no secret that in the past few decades, industrial robots are increasingly replacing workers, and collaborative robots such as Hanwha HCR-12 help people in their work, which also helps to reduce the number of jobs, but how far has it gone?

This trend is observed not only in the United States, Japan and European countries - albeit to a lesser extent, but this is also true for Russia.

A study conducted in the USA describes the general trend and features of the robotization process, showing the different effects of robots on the labor market, depending on the industry and region.

“We find quite serious negative consequences for employment,

” says MIT economist Daron Asemoglu, although he notes that the impact of this trend may be exaggerated.

The study showed that between 1990 and 2007, the addition of one additional robot per 1000 workers reduced employment by about 0.2 percent, with some areas of the United States suffering much more than others.

This means that each robot integrated into production replaced an average of about 3.3 workers.

This increased the use of robots and reduced staff wages by about 0.4 percent over the same time period.

“We find a negative effect on wages - workers' wages in the most affected areas are reduced because robots compete with them,

” says Asemoglu.

The document "Robots and jobs: data from the US labor market» (Robots and Jobs: by Evidence from US Labor Markets is ) has been published in electronic form in the "Journal of Political Economy," authored by Daron Acemoglu and Pascal Restrepo (Pascual Restrepo), associate professor at Boston University Economics .

Geographic differentiation


To conduct the study, Acemoglu and Restrepo used data from 19 industries collected by the International Robotics Federation (IFR), based in Frankfurt, which provides detailed statistics on the implementation of robots around the world. Scientists have combined this with US data on population, employment, business, and wages from the US Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as other sources.

Researchers also compared the placement of robots in the United States with other countries, finding that it lags behind the European one. From 1993 to 2007, American firms actually introduced about one new robot per 1000 workers; in Europe, firms introduced 1.6 new robots per 1000 workers.

"Despite the fact that the United States are technologically very advanced economies in terms of innovation and industrial robots in production, they lag behind many other developed countries" ,

70% of the robots in the US are used in four sectors: automotive (38%), electronics manufacturing (15%), the chemical industry, including plastic production (10%) and metallurgy (7%).

The study analyzed the effect of robots in 722 commuting zones in the continental United States, mainly in metropolitan areas, and found the dependence of the intensity of their implementation on geographic location.
The automobile industry was most affected, and, accordingly, the areas of its localization. Michigan has the highest concentration of robots, with Detroit, Lansing, and Saginaw leaders.

“Different industries have different indicators in different places in the USA. The place where the robot problem is most obvious is Detroit. Whatever happens with the automotive industry, it has a much greater impact on the Detroit region,

”said Asemoglu.

Researchers found that in switching areas where robots are added to the workforce, each robot replaces about 6.6 employees. Nevertheless, the addition of robots to production benefits people in other industries and other areas of the country, among other things - by reducing the cost of goods. These national economic benefits are the reason why researchers estimate that adding one robot eliminates 3.3 jobs for the country as a whole.

The problem of inequality


During the study, Acemoglu and Restrepo made a lot of efforts to find out if the employment trends in the areas of application of industrial robotics could have been caused by other factors, such as trade policy, but did not find such factors.

The study suggests that robots have a direct impact on income inequality. Production jobs that are replaced by robots are often related to professions whose carriers find it difficult to find an alternative job with the same income; this gives rise to a direct link between automation and lower incomes among workers.

“When robots appear at manufacturing enterprises, low and medium skilled workers are left without work. This is an important part of the results of our study - that automation is actually one of the main factors that contributed to the growth of inequality over the past 30 years,

”says Asemoglu.

Thus, while allegations of machines that completely destroy jobs can be a big exaggeration, research shows that robotization affects employment in production and has significant social consequences.

“The results of the study, of course, cannot be an argument that“ robots will take away all our jobs, ”but they mean that automation is a real force that needs to be fought,


” says Asemoglu.

Editor's afterword


This is only one of many studies on this topic, and it cannot be stated unequivocally that robots will force people out of workplaces and leave them without livelihoods. Nevertheless, the data reviewed are objective and provide food for thought. For example, about the price of progress and how to smooth out the social consequences of the transition to automated production. The transition taking place for objective reasons, regardless of our desire.

Though with some delay, but progress, with all its pluses and minuses, comes to Russia.

The questions remain open:

  • How soon will robotization seriously affect the number of jobs in the Russian Federation?
  • Will survive the fourth scientific and technological revolution without social upheaval?
  • What measures should be taken in order to mitigate the blow, and is it necessary to take something?

More articles:


All Articles