Robots can be programmed to perform a simple things like repetitive tasks. Industrial robots employed in factories work with a high degree of accuracy and with constant speed. Industrial robots help increase the number of manufactured products and decrease defective goods. They can produce the same quality products during the production process and do not get exhausted working for a long periods of time.
Now, industrial robots are seen as snatching jobs from human workers. They also cause depressing wages and promoting inequality. Industrial robots can cut into employment and pay rates for workers. The change which had the biggest impact is on the lower half of the wage distribution probably worsening America's wage gap.
Based on an analysis of local data stretching from 1990 and 2007, industrial robots were decreasing employment and pay for human workers because of the automation of jobs that human worker were the one doing it before robots came into picture.
According to new research by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Daron Acemoglu and Boston University's Pascual Restrepo, industrial robots have had a large and negative effect on U.S. employment and wages in local labor markets. Based on their analysis, by adding one additional robot per thousand human workers, it will reduce the employment-to-population ratio by 0.18 to 0.34 percentage points. It also slashes wages by 0.25 to 0.5 percent.
The authors estimated that robots may have increased the wage gap between the top 90th and bottom 10% by as much as 1 percentage point between 1990 and 2007.
Based on the study, U.S. already saw an increase of one new industrial robot for every thousand workers between 1993 and 2007.
Although robots have not taken over yet, they are here to stay. Robots are now working side by side with humans. Human and robot workers should get along. Furthermore, robots can make new opportunities for new human jobs as they will be freed from the repetitive work that robots can excel at – probably preventing insanity in humans.
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