Robots are proliferating, but observers have had trouble identifying the productivity improvements that the robots should be providing, report Scott Andes and Mark Muro at Brookings. In addition, Andes and Muro have found that the robots’ impact on employment is far from clear.
With respect to productivity, they write, little macroeconomic research on robots’ impact has been conducted. “However,” they continue, “new evidence begins to shed some light on the macroeconomic role of automation in the economy. In a new paper from London’s Center for Economic Research, George Graetz and Guy Michaels of Uppsala University and the London School of Economics, respectively, find that industrial robots have been a substantial driver of labor productivity and economic growth.”
Indeed, the paper’s authors write, “We calculate that the increased use of robots raised countries’ average growth rates by about 0.37 percentage points.”
Andes and Muro put that figure on par with productivity gains sparked by the steam engine from 1850 to 1910, and they put robots in the category of “general purpose technology” (GPT), which they define as having “…a pervasive, longstanding impact on a number of dissimilar industries.”
Andes and Muro have also looked at job losses due to increased use of robots. According to the Wall Street Journal, “They found some countries that have adopted robots much faster than the U.S.—including Germany and South Korea—saw far smaller losses in jobs between 1996 and 2012. Meanwhile, both Britain and Australia have lagged the U.S. on robots, yet suffered deeper job losses.”
According to the Journal, Muro says robots might vaporize jobs, but at this point the debate has gotten out front of the data.
