CDZ robots are essential to the competitiveness of a country’s manufacturing sector

[320 Years of History]

In examining the legitimacy of some of the claims and lamentations I've seen on USMB about robots and job loss, I came across the following Scott Andes and Mark Muro blog entry.

In an recent blog, we described new research by George Graetz and Guy Michaels that shows the impact of automation technology in productivity statistics. So now there is good evidence that robots are a driver of economic growth. However, this new evidence poses a question: Has productivity growth from robots come at the cost of manufacturing jobs?

Between 1993 and 2007 (the timeframe studied by Graetz and Micheals) the United States increased the number of robots per hour worked by 237 percent. During the same period the U.S. economy shed 2.2 million manufacturing jobs. Assuming the two trends are linked doesn’t seem farfetched.

Of course, correlation is not causation, and there is no shortage of alternative explanations for the decline in U.S. manufacturing. Globalization, offshoring, and skills gaps are just three frequently cited causes. Moreover, some researchers, like MIT’s David Autor, have argued that workers are benefiting from working alongside robots.

So is there a relationship between job loss and the use of industrial robots?

The substantial variation of the degree to which countries deploy robots should provide clues. If robots are a substitute for human workers, then one would expect the countries with much higher investment rates in automation technology to have experienced greater employment loss in their manufacturing sectors. Germany deploys over three times as many robots per hour worked than the United States, largely due to Germany’s robust automotive industry, which is by far the most robot-intensive industry (with over 10 times more robots per worker than the average industry). Sweden has 60 percent more robots per hour worked than the United States thanks to its highly technical metal and chemical industries.

Yet the evidence suggests there is essentially no relationship between the change in manufacturing employment and robot use. Despite the installation of far more robots between 1993 and 2007, Germany lost just 19 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 1996 and 2012 compared to a 33 percent drop in the United States. (We introduce a three-year time lag to allow for robots to influence the labor market and continued with the most recent data, 2012). Korea, France, and Italy also lost fewer manufacturing jobs than the United States even as they introduced more industrial robots. On the other hand, countries like the United Kingdom and Australia invested less in robots but saw faster declines in their manufacturing sectors.

Another way to look at this is to ask: How many jobs would each economy have lost if the decline in manufacturing employment was proportional to the increase in robots?

By this metric the United States should have lost one-third more manufacturing jobs than it actually did and Germany should have lost 50 percent more, while the United Kingdom lost five times more than it should have. The lesson is that the net impacts of automation on employment in manufacturing are not simple, and at least during the time frame studied here they cannot be said to have caused job losses.

Industrial robots are a disruptive technology, and as disruptive technologies take hold some workers benefit while others are hurt. But to suggest, as some in popular media have, that the use of robots is a causal factor in the decline of American manufacturing employment is factually wrong and misses a broader point. As the productivity figures suggest, robots are increasingly essential to the competitiveness of a country’s manufacturing sector. The fact that countries like Germany, Sweden, and Korea are deploying automation technology at a much faster rate than the United States points to serious competitive challenges—and further debate about the use and impacts of automation.
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So what is it to be? The loss of jobs or the loss of the companies that, failing to keep pace with productivity gains afforded by robots, cease to be going concerns because they don't deploy robots? It's clear to me that I want to work and that I cannot outperform robots at specific tasks. It's also clear to me that if the firms on which I depend for my livelihood go out of business, I will have to do some other type of work.

 

[Holos]

Can we take a single specific job as an analytical example?

Since robotics would have to be specifically applied to the robot's function, it isn't pragmatic to analyze a comparison of robotics with the manufacturing industry through unspecified functional groups (multiple nationally spanning jobs).

Also, consider it is the manufacturing industry which manufactures robots. Is the purpose of robotics then really to keep making more robots, and thus outsource manufacture, or is it's purpose to fulfill specific economic niches through specific and improved technological adaption?

Could not the same manufacturing job be improved, rather than taken away or made to be displaced, through the substitution only of a tool (the very essence of what a robot is) within that job or within the purpose of that job?

 

[320 Years of History]

Can we take a single specific job as an analytical example?

Robots are the specific example. A robot is a specific example of technological innovation that creates a shift in the supply curve in any place where robots are introduced into the productive process. While it's easy to see robots as a new technology, robots are hardly the only example of new technology.

• A new kind of lubricant that extends the lifecycle of a gear is another.
• A communication technology that allows for "as needed/on the spot" adjustments in real time to customer-specific customization demands.
• Computer software that enables better analysis of production/operations metrics.
• A machine that can integrate two processes into one, thereby allowing concurrent rather than linear processing.
• A round gizmo that lets people roll things instead of dragging or carrying them.
• Discovering that a^2 + b^2 = c^2

Economically speaking, technology refers to anything -- an object, an actionable intellectual discovery, etc. -- that shifts the supply curve producers and political economies experience. (Tech advancements don't shift the demand curve. They cause reductions/increases in the quantity demanded of a supplied good or service.)

Lest one forget, today's robots are little other than yesteryear's cotton gin, combustion engine, electricity, etc. "on steroids." Carriage drivers and other workers of the 19th century whose jobs were replaced by an engine that turned a wheel or moved an object weren't any more keen on the combustion engine than are today's taxi drivers and displaced factory workers are about robotic cars or assembly line robots.

 

[Holos]

Can we take a single specific job as an analytical example?

Robots are the specific example. A robot is a specific example of technological innovation that creates a shift in the supply curve in any place where robots are introduced into the productive process. While it's easy to see robots as a new technology, robots are hardly the only example of new technology.

• A new kind of lubricant that extends the lifecycle of a gear is another.
• A communication technology that allows for "as needed/on the spot" adjustments in real time to customer-specific customization demands.
• Computer software that enables better analysis of production/operations metrics.
• A machine that can integrate two processes into one, thereby allowing concurrent rather than linear processing.
• A round gizmo that lets people roll things instead of dragging or carrying them.
• Discovering that a^2 + b^2 = c^2

Economically speaking, technology refers to anything -- an object, an actionable intellectual discovery, etc. -- that shifts the supply curve producers and political economies experience. (Tech advancements don't shift the demand curve. They cause reductions/increases in the quantity demanded of a supplied good or service.)

Lest one forget, today's robots are little other than yesteryear's cotton gin, combustion engine, electricity, etc. "on steroids." Carriage drivers and other workers of the 19th century whose jobs were replaced by an engine that turned a wheel or moved an object weren't any more keen on the combustion engine than are today's taxi drivers and displaced factory workers are about robotic cars or assembly line robots.

Robots aren't and can't be jobs. Robots are tools or agents porter of tools. They fulfill jobs. They function through technology; technology is their mode of operation; their singularity cannot be equated with or to technology.

A job is a singular activity with multiple procedures. A job is not and cannot be a singular object in a functional economy.

 

[320 Years of History]

Robots aren't and can't be jobs.

Of course robots are not jobs. They are a technology that alter the nature of how a job gets performed. That's what all technologies are/were.

I'm sorry. I thought you were asking for examples of technologies that have altered the nature of how jobs are performed, not examples of jobs that have been altered by technology, namely robotics.

Pick any job that appeals to you as goes its evolution into being a robot-performed job. I don't care which you pick.

 

[Holos]

Robots aren't and can't be jobs.

Of course robots are not jobs. They are a technology that alter the nature of how a job gets performed. That's what all technologies are/were.

I'm sorry. I thought you were asking for examples of technologies that have altered the nature of how jobs are performed, not examples of jobs that have been altered by technology, namely robotics.

Pick any job that appeals to you as goes its evolution into being a robot-performed job. I don't care which you pick.

Lets make it somewhat fundamental for the field of robotics, involving arithmetic calculation.

How about assessing and computing electronic votes, otherwise generally titled as bureaucratic regulation?

Currently, in the U.S., that job is strictly fulfilled by hands on paper.
There is protocol and procedure to the job so its validity is ensured, in order that the company (in this case government) profits according to the projected plan in which the job is included, and that the workers contributing their time are also paid adequately.

If robots replace the paper and all the other materials that come with it for this specific job, the job won't be lost and it will still require a worker to verify the protocol for each tool (robot). Neither the company would be lost, since an advance in technology would promote the use of its resources. In fact, with the adoption of robots as more efficient assistant tools for assessing and computing votes, it is quite likely that there would be more positions for the job opened, as it would also be easier and perhaps more attractive for the general public to engage with the system. In other words, more people voting, more robots for taking those votes required, and more workers to validate the robots' functioning throughout the process being hired and paid, including those who would maintain the robots and assure their function for when the time again came to vote and to calculate votes.

It seems to me that improvement in technology planned to accommodate greater qualified standards in employee routines and employer costs can't and wouldn't be concisely associated to any sort of economic loss as you seem to have had initially proposed in the OP.

 

[alang1216]

Robots aren't and can't be jobs.

Of course robots are not jobs. They are a technology that alter the nature of how a job gets performed. That's what all technologies are/were.

I'm sorry. I thought you were asking for examples of technologies that have altered the nature of how jobs are performed, not examples of jobs that have been altered by technology, namely robotics.

Pick any job that appeals to you as goes its evolution into being a robot-performed job. I don't care which you pick.

I don't get why anyone thinks todays robots are something unique? Currently robots merely automate existing manual jobs, a process that has been going on since we yoked oxen to plows. Jobs change or disappear, and for those adversely affected it is rough, but overall the effect on society has always been positive. The printing press put many scribes out of business but created many more new and better paying jobs.

 

[320 Years of History]

Robots aren't and can't be jobs.

Of course robots are not jobs. They are a technology that alter the nature of how a job gets performed. That's what all technologies are/were.

I'm sorry. I thought you were asking for examples of technologies that have altered the nature of how jobs are performed, not examples of jobs that have been altered by technology, namely robotics.

Pick any job that appeals to you as goes its evolution into being a robot-performed job. I don't care which you pick.

I don't get why anyone thinks todays robots are something unique? Currently robots merely automate existing manual jobs, a process that has been going on since we yoked oxen to plows. Jobs change or disappear, and for those adversely affected it is rough, but overall the effect on society has always been positive. The printing press put many scribes out of business but created many more new and better paying jobs.

Red:
I can answer that question, but I don't think many folks here will like seeing the answer.

You are, of course, correct about the nature of technological advancement and its impacts throughout time.