Setting Records and Taking Names (Not Jobs)

The Robot­ic Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion recent­ly shared a report about the new records that have been set by robot orders and ship­ments in North America. 

“We’re encour­aged by the con­tin­ued strength in the North Amer­i­can robot­ics mar­ket,” said Jeff Burnsetin, pres­i­dent of RIA. ​“The inter­est in robot­ics remains strong not just in North Amer­i­ca, but all over the world, as com­pa­nies rec­og­nize that robots can help them improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, prod­uct qual­i­ty, and flexibility.

Since 2014, the robots ordered from North Amer­i­ca have increased 14% in units and 11% in dol­lars; while the amount of ship­ments to North Amer­i­ca are up 10% in units and 9% in dol­lars. RIA is esti­mat­ing that around 260,000 robots are now being used in fac­to­ries nation­wide, which is third to Japan and Chi­na in robot use.

In spite of the steady increase in robot pro­duc­tion, we need not be con­cerned about the job threat some think robots present. ​“Today there are more oppor­tu­ni­ties than ever before in the robot­ics indus­try. The con­tin­u­ing growth in robot­ics is open­ing many new job oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who can pro­gram, install, run, and main­tain robots. In fact, if you look clos­er at the jobs dis­cus­sion, automa­tion is help­ing to save and cre­ate jobs. A lot of com­pa­nies tell us they wouldn’t be in busi­ness with­out robot­ics and relat­ed automa­tion” states Bernstein. 

Ulti­mate­ly, robots will be a huge job cre­ator as they free humans up to do new work, instead of hard labor that once was nec­es­sary. We can relate this to the agri­cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion that was able to lib­er­ate Amer­i­cans to pur­sue a wide range of more advanced job call­ings off of the farm. Or per­haps com­pare it to the inven­tion of the inter­net; where two decades ago most were unaware of it and it now has not only vast­ly ben­e­fit­ed and con­nect­ed the world, but also cre­at­ed mil­lions of jobs for Amer­i­cans alone. His­to­ry has shown that suc­cess is dri­ven by dynam­ic inno­va­tions and con­stant change that lib­er­ate humans from back break­ing, time-con­sum­ing labor, and allow for more invest­ment in new com­pa­nies and ideas of the future.

A study by Upp­sala Uni­ver­si­ty and Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, by Georg Graetz and Guy Michael, also reit­er­at­ed that the fear of robot job replace­ment doesn’t hold much ground. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and employ­ment were com­pared between the years 1993 and 2007, when robots were not near­ly as advanced as today, and found that ​“despite ubiq­ui­tous dis­cus­sions of robots’ poten­tial impact, there is almost no sys­tem­at­ic empir­i­cal evi­dence on their eco­nom­ic effects.”

So here’s to you robots…for doing the hard work and prov­ing that automa­tion inno­va­tions can indeed rep­re­sent new and con­tin­u­al job creation. 

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the robots at Robot­worx or any of the tra­di­tion­al indus­tri­al robots avail­able from the com­pa­nies, con­tact Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and ABB. Our staff will work with you to help you design and build the best robot­ic sys­tem for you and your facility.