Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

When the robots come for our jobs

When the robots come for our jobs

While much of the assembly process at Ford’s Kansas City Assembly plant is automated, the company employs approximately 8,000 workers there. From being run over by robot trucks to potential increases in freight efficiency – whether you love the idea of autonomous vehicles or hate them – there’s no shortage of naysayers, cheerleaders or fear-mongerers.

The naysayers are the group who claim this technology is more Jetsons than reality and I think this population of people shrinks a little everyday. We should all be able to agree this is probably going to happen. We can debate when, and we’re about […]

New Study Finds That Six Jobs Are Lost for Every Robot Added to the Workforce

New Study Finds That Six Jobs Are Lost for Every Robot Added to the Workforce

A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research presents sobering statistics that illustrate the impact automation is already having on the workforce, noting that each industrial robot introduced between 1990 and 2007 lead to the loss of 6.2 jobs. The Real Impact of Automation

Few subjects are quite as divisive right now as the potential impact of automation on employment. Some, like U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin , believe we needn’t be concerned, while others assert that we are already at the start of the biggest workforce upheaval since the Industrial Revolution. Click to View Full Infographic […]

How Many Robots Does It Take to Replace a Human Job?

How Many Robots Does It Take to Replace a Human Job?

Benoit Tessier / Reuters Last week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he wasn’t worried at all about advancing artificial intelligence taking over jobs anytime soon. In fact, he said, he wouldn’t be worried about it for for another 50 to 100 years.

As I wrote recently, many experts would disagree with the notion that displacement—or at the very least, shifts—in the labor market due to automation are that far afield. Recent studies from McKinsey and the economists Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne estimate that around 45 percent of workers currently perform tasks that could be automated in the […]

Canada, U.S. take starkly different approaches to addressing robot jobs

Canada, U.S. take starkly different approaches to addressing robot jobs

Amigo, a white robot the size of a person, uses information gathered by other robots to move towards a table to pick up a carton of milk and deliver it to an imaginary patient in a mock hospital room at the Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherlands, Wednesday Jan. 15, 2014. (AP / Peter Dejong) Should we be preparing for the coming invasion of job-stealing, career-crushing robots? It’s a question that’s moved from science-fiction novels to the tip of policy-makers’ tongues.

Canadian and American policy-makers have just delivered very different answers.

Canada’s finance minister tabled a budget that mentioned Artificial Intelligence and […]

Study: Robots Responsible For “Rust Belt” Unemployment, Not Illegal Immigrants

Study: Robots Responsible For “Rust Belt” Unemployment, Not Illegal Immigrants

MIT and Boston University researchers have found that industrial automation is strongly correlated with unemployment and economic inequality in the manufacturing centers of the United States, taking more jobs away than immigrants or increased foreign imports. Rosser Pryor, Co-owner and President of Factory Automation Systems, stands near new high-performance industrial robots at the company’s Atlanta facility. (AP/David Goldman) MINNEAPOLIS– While the media and numerous politicians have often blamed Midwestern unemployment on illegal immigration, a new study asserts that the advent of factory robots is the most significant factor in the steep reduction of available jobs in what was once […]

When robots replace workers, the effects ripple throughout the community, and they last

When robots replace workers, the effects ripple throughout the community, and they last

(c) 2017, The Washington Post.

Economists have long argued that automation, not trade, is responsible for the bulk of the 6 million jobs shed by the manufacturing sector over the last 25 years. Now, they have a put a precise figure on some of the losses.

Industrial robots alone have eliminated up to 670,000 American jobs between 1990 and 2007, according to new research from MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and Boston University’s Pascual Restrepo.The number is stunning on the face of it, and many have interpreted the study as an indictment of technological change – a sign that “robots are winning the […]

Robots Could Take Over 10 Million Jobs in Less Than 10 Years

Robots Could Take Over 10 Million Jobs in Less Than 10 Years

Star Wars Can robots write blog posts? Asking for a friend. A new study out of Boston University, picked up by Quartz , studied the impact of automation on the American workforce between 1990 and 2007. The findings indicate that robots pose far more of a threat to the American worker than do, say, illegal immigrants.

The study found that for every additional industrial robot added to the workforce, employment in that "commuting area" was reduced by between three and six human workers. Adding insult to injury, every one of our new metallic friends lowered wages by between .25 and […]

Automation study: 1 robot takes 5.6 jobs per 1,000 workers

Automation study: 1 robot takes 5.6 jobs per 1,000 workers

Industrial, automated robots build cars for Ford, a company that pioneered the assembly line. Source: Reuters Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin raised eyebrows last week by saying he was “not worried at all,” about robots taking jobs, even going so far to say, “I’m optimistic.” According to Mnuchin, “it’s not even on our radar screen…50 to 100 more years.”

According to a new study by researchers at MIT and Boston University, this is very wrong, and the data tell a far different story of robots driving down wages and stealing jobs. The researchers, Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of […]

The Job Automation Eliminated

The Job Automation Eliminated

Source: Future of Jobs Report, World Economic Forum A primary focus of the past election cycle and the current administration has been jobs. More specifically, there has been a great deal of talk about bringing jobs back that were offshored over the past decades. But speaking about boosting employment in this way does little to address the evolving needs of the market or help prepare people for the jobs that are available. As noted in a recent blog post , the number of open positions in U.S. manufacturing is currently the highest it’s been in 15 years due to […]

Ai and tech fears? It’s up to HR to get the future balance right, warns Sawers

Ai and tech fears? It’s up to HR to get the future balance right, warns Sawers

Guest Blog by Doug Sawers, managing director, SD Worx UK & Ireland Is the future really that bleak? Nobody is safe, according to many scientists and technology gurus. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots will soon to be able to do almost everything better than humans and will take over most jobs, including that of a doctor, lawyer and other professionals.

Professor Stephen Hawking has said that, “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Likewise, the Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, has claimed that “up to 15 million of current jobs in Britain” […]