Robots Appear To Raise Productivity Without Causing Total Work Hours To Decline

Hallie Siegel writes: We often read about the economic impact of robots on employment, usually accompanied with the assertion that "robots steal jobs". But to date there has precious little economic analysis of the actual effects that robots are already having on employment and productivity. Georg Graetz (Professor of Economics at Uppsala University) and Guy Michaels (Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics) undertook a study (abstract) of how robots impacted productivity and employment between 1993 and 2007, and found that "industrial robots increase labor productivity, total factor productivity and wages." And while there is some evidence that they reduced the employment of low skilled workers, and, to a lesser extent, middle skilled workers, industrial robots had no significant effect on total hours worked.

This is important because it seems to contradict many of the pessimistic assertions that are presently being made about the impact of robots on jobs. What I am especially curious about is post-2007 data, however, because it's just in the past few years that we have seen a major shift in industrial robotics to incorporate collaborative robots, or co-robots. (Robots specifically designed to work alongside humans, as tools for augmenting human performance.) One might reasonably suspect that some of the negative impact of industrial robotics on low and middle skilled workers pre 2007 could be offset by the more recent and increasing use of co-bots, which are not designed to replace humans, but instead to make them more efficient.

Comments

I've said it before

[gurps_npc]

and I'll say it again - technology INCREASES jobs, never decreases it - over the long term. Over the short term it can make certain skills worthless, putting some people out of work, but that's it.

Mainly because work is not a set amount. We don't need X, and never need X+1. The amount of work that we want to be done so far exceeds the amount of work we need to do, or can do, that if we replace every single job in the entire world, in twenty years, all the new people will have created new jobs.

Give clothing to every single person in the world? We want more than one outfit. Give us 100 outfits each? We want to each have a unique, handsewn outfit. etc. etc. etc. Give us all sex bots and we will each want two sex bots for a threesome.

That's the nature of mankind.

No jobs? No talk to me when mankind has terraformed every planet in the solar system. Till then, stop being a ludite.

Re:I've said it before

[CastrTroy]

While I generally agree, what happens when the only jobs left are those that require creativity or critical thinking. There's a lot of people out there who can't do anything more complicated than repeating a few simple tasks over and over again. These jobs are going to be replace by robots. When the only jobs left are jobs that require high levels of thought, there's going to be a lot of people who simply can't hold down a job. I don't think that changing the way we educate people or making education free or anything else is going to be able to change the fact that some people don't have the cognitive ability to do the high level jobs that robots won't be able to do.

Re:I've said it before

[PopeRatzo]

and I'll say it again - technology INCREASES jobs, never decreases it - over the long term.

If robots don't cause total human working hours to decline, then what the fuck good are they? Are we really automating the work force so people can work more? If so, then please stop with the robots.

Or, maybe we can just dispense with the "robots will make human lives easier" BS and just go straight to "robots will increase profits for people who already have all the fucking money".

Rule of thumb: If there's a human endeavor that doesn't make human lives better, then it is not worth doing.

Re:I've said it before

[PopeRatzo]

Not a great example, but I'm sure others can think of a better one.

Let's hope so. Because there's no question that automation has lowered the incomes of working people. Robots devalue labor, so if the goal is to make people poorer, it's working.

Re:I've said it before

[gtall]

You mean in the past technology has increased jobs. There is no universal law that it be so in the future.

My sister tried to use this argument about why a particular tree limb didn't need to be cut down. It had never fallen in the past so it would never fall in the future.

Re:And where the hell's my leisure time?

[CastrTroy]

The owner of the robots got a very nice pay raise. The robots are the ones who actually increased the productivity, so it's only natural that the owner of the robots would get to reap the rewards. Why should the human workers get a pay raise, they aren't the ones who are actually increasing productivity.

Re:Robots do eliminate jobs

[Overzeetop]

"crappy, boring, mind-numbingly repetitive tasks"

You might be surprised that this is the extent of the ability for a great number of workers out there. It's easy to forget when you're in an all-white collar environment that there is a large portion of the population which has close to zero independent problem solving ability, and an overlapping portion which has almost zero reliability. As someone who deals with these people on a regular basis, I can tell you that they are some of the nicest people I know, and yet sometime during their lifetime there will be a robot which can do their job better and more reliably at a fraction of what it costs to feed, clothe and house them.

Two factories

[aralin]

Two factories make toilet paper, one introduces robots and doubles its production and also profit margins, the number of employees stays the same. There is no impact to those employees, but the other factory goes out of business. That is where the jobs get lost and that is what the study does not measure. Same amount of toilet paper is produced at twice efficiency and half of the jobs get lost in the overall economy.

Ask former bulk food packagers

[EmperorOfCanada]

If you were to poll people who once worked in bulk goods packaging you might find that they are working even more hours at their minimum wage jobs because they lost their jobs on the assembly line that barely kept their families fed. Since 2002 something like 85% of jobs in the bulk packaging world have gone. This, with a huge increase in bulk packaging output.

Re:No decrease does not mean an increase

[AmiMoJo]

In the 1950s black people were second class citizens. Homophobia was pretty rampant (it was actually illegal in many countries, not sure about the US). Access to information was much more limited before the internet. While in legal terms you may have lost some freedom recently, overall things are much better now than they were in the 1950s.

Re:Nope

[AmiMoJo]

Redistribution of wealth is inevitable. The only question is if you want it done in a controlled, orderly fashion (socialism) or by violence.

Re:Nope

[AmiMoJo]

Looks like you didn't study history very well. Eventually those who amass wealth are always overthrown and the wealth redistributed. It's inevitable, because wealth accumulates and eventually the majority decide that they are better of risking a violent overthrow than continuing to live off the crumbs that are handed down to them.