Industrial Electronics

Will robots take our jobs?

10 July 2021

I remember a story my grandmother told me in the early 90s. She recalled that in the 1960s that she strongly believed “computers would take everyone’s job,” resulting in massive unemployment. It was only time, she said.

Of course we know today that she was wrong. Computers not only created more jobs than they replaced, but also produced a new great era of societal prosperity.Robots are taking over dangerous and repetitive tasks from humans – but how far will it go? Source: The People Speak/CC BY-NC 2.0Robots are taking over dangerous and repetitive tasks from humans – but how far will it go? Source: The People Speak/CC BY-NC 2.0

I am sure my grandmother heard similar stories from her grandmother, from a time when Luddites feared the industrial revolution meant steam and coal fired machines would take most people's jobs. But instead of taking jobs, a large percentage of farmers flocked to industrial cities and factories for far better and higher paying jobs.

Today we hear these same claims yet again, that ‘robots will take our jobs.’ They’d cite specific jobs that were lost, but would not mention all the new jobs created, or the huge benefit to consumers for lower-cost goods. The most recent fear-mongering even reached the 2020 primaries, where then presidential candidate Andrew Yang made a case for UBI, or universal basic income. He argued that a $1,000/month payout would be increasingly necessary in the near future, as robots would replace all jobs and workers would be pushed into poverty.

“This time will be different,” they would say.

Fortunately, this claim does not even stand up to the most basic criticisms. For one, the historical unemployment rate has not appreciably increased since the 1960s (see chart below), when robots first entered industry with the Unimate. This, despite exponential increases of robots entering service ever since then. If robots actually took jobs, unemployment would have equivalently increased. Far more industrial jobs have been lost to competition from Chinese factories, with short term but massive unemployment spikes caused by credit bubbles, tech bubbles, a mortgage crisis and government-ordered lockdowns.

Historical U.S. umemployment rates. Source: BLSHistorical U.S. umemployment rates. Source: BLS

To better understand the economics of a robotic takeover of jobs, let us do a mental exercise and assume the doomsayers were correct. In such a future scenario, all humans become unemployed, with zero wages as robots do all the work. It is then claimed that the owners of these factories will have full and centralized control of all wealth, acting as overlords of the unemployed masses.

The first question to ask is: what are the robots producing, if people have no money to purchase products? How could a factory owner be wealthy, if no one has wages to purchase goods? This obvious paradoxical situation is impossible.

If robots were to actually take jobs, workers would have less available cash to spend. A reduction in available cash creates a deflationary environment, where the cost of goods would accordingly drop. Think of the supply-demand curve in economics 101, where reduced demand caused by lower wages results in lower prices for products. Products would invariably become more affordable for workers, correcting for the wage loss in jobs. Additionally, deflationary environments mean lower wages, making it more affordable for employers to hire more employees. Cheaper labor means employers see reduced savings in automation — a factory would not install robots if labor can be had for less. The economy, when not hindered by regulatory edicts, naturally self-corrects.

Some studies have found a small reduction in wages and employment with the introduction of additional robots, however this correlation is not necessarily causation. For example, a regulation that makes it more expensive to hire labor would result in both lower employment and companies utilizing more robots — employers do not need to pay maternity leave to a robot. In the short term, workers could lose their jobs to an expansion of robotic labor, but unlike robots, humans eventually adapt and get new jobs.

On that note, this is a prime argument against raising the minimum wage. Increasing the cost of labor effectively incentivizes employers to replace said labor with cheaper machines. A well-intentioned increase in minimum wage could make the least skilled and most marginalized of workers unemployable. It has even been said that large companies with heavy automation often push for a higher minimum wage under a public banner of virtue, but with a hidden agenda. Their smaller non-automated competition, which relies more on labor, could consequently be pushed into bankruptcy with government mandated higher wages.

In the face of increasing automation, what are workers to do? Become adaptive to change. Workers should focus on ‘future-proof’ jobs and develop malleable skill sets. Workers should also stay abreast with the latest advancements in their industry, updating skills as needed. And, our education systems should be designed in such a way that skills are taught for the jobs of the future.

There are jobs which arguably are robot-proof. For example, jobs which require a deep understanding of the human psyche, which a robot could never understand: customer service, graphic design, leadership/politics, therapy, law, child education and cooking. Jobs that involve the creation or use of advanced technologies would put workers in positions of control: programming, engineering, data security or machine repair. Jobs that are difficult to automate, or one-off jobs that are not profitable to automate, would be relatively robot-proof.

As long as humans are smarter and more adaptable than robots, humans will always have jobs. And when that is no longer true — when machines become superior to humans — the job market would be the least of our worries.

About the author

John Palmisano has 20 years experience in all things autonomous systems. Graduated in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in mechanical engineering, he continued on to work a decade at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC, as a robotics specialist and research engineer. There he contributed to robotic systems ranging from creating biomimetic underwater drones to independently designing and building the entire fuel cell control system for the Navy’s Ion Tiger drone. During his time at the NRL, he authored and co-authored nearly two dozen scientific papers.

In 2016, he moved on to be an independent freelancer doing computer simulations, performing computer based modeling for engineering and cryptocurrency problems, designing and constructing off-grid sustainable systems, and building mass-market commercial electronic systems for clients globally.

To contact the author of this article, email GlobalSpecEditors@globalspec.com


Powered by CR4, the Engineering Community

Discussion – 0 comments

By posting a comment you confirm that you have read and accept our Posting Rules and Terms of Use.
Engineering Newsletter Signup
Get the GlobalSpec
Stay up to date on:
Features the top stories, latest news, charts, insights and more on the end-to-end electronics value chain.
Advertisement
Weekly Newsletter
Get news, research, and analysis
on the Electronics industry in your
inbox every week - for FREE
Sign up for our FREE eNewsletter
Advertisement
Find Free Electronics Datasheets
Advertisement