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Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs (nytimes.com)
Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they've declared a different winner: the robots. From a report on the New York Times: The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. It appears to be the first study to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots. The paper is all the more significant because the researchers, whose work is highly regarded in their field, had been more sanguine about the effect of technology on jobs. In a paper last year, they said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels. Just as cranes replaced dockworkers but created related jobs for engineers and financiers, the theory goes, new technology has created new jobs for software developers and data analysts. From a report on The Verge, which looks at another finding in the study: They found that each new robot added to the workforce meant the loss of between 3 and 5.6 jobs in the local commuting area. Meanwhile, for each new robot added per 1,000 workers, wages in the surrounding area would fall between 0.25 and 0.5 percent.
We have H-1Bs for that. No worries.
Oh yeah it's positively terrible out there for humans! This morning I had to dodge around all the robots doing road construction on my street, the robot neighbor walking his robot dogs, the robot making my espresso when I got to work, all the robots in the hallways, the lab full of robots working on validatiing other robots, and just now I got an email from my robot boss who sent me a list of all the robots that he wants me to be sure have access to our fileserver so they can share information with other robots about the robot projects they're all working on for the robot CEO. Just remembered I'll need to go down to the cafeteria later to ask the robot cashiers to give me a refund for the vending machine that ripped me off. I am looking forward to when I'm off work, there are robot shows I want to sit down and watch with my robot wife and robot kids, and it's always relaxing to make the robot cat chase the laser pointer.