Robots: Are They Creating or Displacing Jobs?
If you go with the inuitive answer you will likely be wrong for at least the near future of manufacturing.
However, there’s building research that suggests that robots are responsible for new job creation.
In fact, a recent RobotEnomics article by Colin Lewis, a behavioral economist and data scientist, states that jobs are created in companies that implement robots. His research of 76 companies where factory or warehouse robots are used, indicated an increase in employees by nearly 300,000 in the last three years.
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) supports this, estimating that robotics directly created four to six million jobs through 2011—or eight to 10 million, including indirect jobs. The IFR projects that 1.9 to 3.5 million jobs will be created by 2021, attributing the use of robots in new product development, current industry expansion, and downstream job development for the increases. Earlier research by the IFR determined a job-creation ratio of 3.6 jobs for every robot deployed and that with more robots, fewer jobs are lost.
And there is real live evidence that supports these numbers as well.