Tag: manufactur

Unsettling New Statistics Reveal Just How Quickly Robots Can Replace Human Workers

Unsettling New Statistics Reveal Just How Quickly Robots Can Replace Human Workers

They don’t sleep, don’t need health insurance, and usually don’t embarrass themselves at the work Christmas party. Robots might make employers happy, but new research shows just what kind of impact this could have on the structure of the US economy and the shape of its future workforce.

A pair of economists from MIT and Boston University have published a report at the US National Bureau of Economic Research outlining the cost of swapping human labour for programmed machines in areas such as manufacture, agriculture, research and development, and even education.

The results aren’t exactly great for workers in those labour […]

The robot debate is over: the jobs are gone and they aren’t coming back

The robot debate is over: the jobs are gone and they aren't coming back

In 2013, the Oxford Martin School released a report that looked at the automation of work, assessing the likelihood that robots and other technologies would replace humans. It concluded that of the 702 job categories examined, 47% were susceptible to automation within the next 20 years. The report completely upended our ideas about the future of work.

Now, a new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the United States is set to be an even bigger wake-up call. Written by economists Daron Acemoglu (MIT) and Pascual Restrepo (Boston University), it not only adds support to the […]

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 […]

Trade vs Automation

Trade vs Automation

Greg Chesnutt Bringing jobs back to America has been a hot topic of discussion and debate in U.S. news cycles since President Trump began his campaign for office, and one of particular interest in the manufacturing space. While statistics vary, the idea that manufacturing industry employment has been on the decline for many years is undisputed. In fact, according to a CNNMoney article , since 2000, the U.S. has shed 5 million manufacturing jobs.

While these numbers are sobering, they only tell part of the story. From trade agreements to global wage disparity, there’s still plenty left up to interpretation […]

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 […]