In a previous post I discussed a paper from Oxford University that suggests 47% of total US employment is at risk from computerization. In light of the Oxford paper, it's worth looking at earlier research (originally conducted in 2011 and updated in January of this year) from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) and Metra Martech. (Read my post on the Oxford study here.)
A report of the Metra Martech research results begins by examining employment in Brazil, Japan, China, South Korea, Germany, and the US. In all cases except Japan, paid employment has risen, with any losses in manufacturing jobs outpaced by new jobs in distribution and services as well as “new manufacturing applications, particularly using technology advances to create new consumer products.”
The report continues, “The level of robotics use has almost always doubled in all of the six countries (except Japan) in the eleven years covered by the study. The proportion of the workforce that is unemployed has generally reduced except in the USA.”
The report says 8 to 10 million jobs were created as a result of robotics through 2008, and another 500,000 to 700, 000 jobs were created through 2011. Metra Martech estimates that an additional 900,000 to 1.5 million will be created by the end of 2016, with an additional 1.2 million created through 2020.
Metra Martech cites three driving forces for robotics: a product cannot be made to satisfactory precision, consistency, and cost without robotics; the conditions under which current work is done are unsatisfactory (for example, where conditions would fail to meet safety standards in developed countries); and when a manufacturer in a developed country faces high labor costs that are not competitive with low-labor-cost manufacturers.
As for persistently high unemployment rates, the reports says, “The concept of 'jobless recovery,' where an industry comes out of a recession leaner, needing fewer employees, is only short term. It is likely to lead to more job creation by the leaner, more competitive companies. At the same time, the service sector continues to absorb most of the displaced people. Some of these new service people owe their jobs to new robot-driven industry.”
The report notes, “Where automation displaces people in manufacturing it almost always increases output. In some cases it allows such an increase in production and related decrease in unit price, that it creates a whole new market and generates the need for downstream jobs to get the product to the consumer. It releases employees for other, often new jobs outside manufacturing. Historically, this has always been the case.”
The report does acknowledge another possibility: “An alternative view is that this displacement in the future will be more difficult to place, as service robotics may take over some or many of the new job opportunities in human tasks such as in banking, fast food chains, and retailing petrol forecourts.” Nevertheless, the report continues, “What is likely is that the growth of the production, marketing, selling, and maintaining service robots will create the next wave of employment.”
So what to make of the Oxford and Metra Martech findings? They are not necessarily in conflict. Metra Martech presents a compelling picture through 2020. Beyond that, computers may advance to the point where they can replace many more people. Metra Martech acknowledges that while historically automation has always created more jobs than it has destroyed, displaced manufacturing workers in the future may find increasing competition from service robots. But the design, production, marketing, and maintenance of service robots may create another wave of employment.