Robots Steel or Donate Work? [featuring Saifer87]

I start by saying that what you read in this post I do not find it very true! in the sense that for me it will take much longer before it can come true and that really the work can one day favor both … but I do not want to take away the taste of this article and I leave you to read thanks in advance ..

At least according to data from an economic study carried out in Germany: automation deletes some old tasks, but generates other better paid ones. Will it be like this everywhere?

The predictions on the impact of robots in the workplace are often apocalyptic, but perhaps we may have sinned to pessimism. Or rather, it may not necessarily go wrong, or not everywhere. The first large study on the effects of automation on the German economy seems to indicate, in fact, that the machines not only did not take away jobs, but, overall, they created new ones, and better paid.

According to research conducted by the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany, from 2011 to 2016 the entry of robots into the German labor market led to an overall increase in employment between 1.5 and 1 , 8% (here the original document, in German).

TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS. If at the beginning the machines absorbed and accelerated a series of tasks, leading to a 5% job loss, they then generated new ones, and better paid. How is it possible? “Now that company can produce the same goods, in a more economical way,” explains Melanie Arntz, one of the authors. The product costs less, and sells more, “the demand rises, and it takes more people to satisfy it”

CROSSED VALUATIONS. The experts came to this conclusion after interviewing 2,000 managers of many companies in various sectors of the country’s economy.

The managers had to evaluate the degree of automation of their companies for each year of the period considered, and the data were compared with those on about 300 thousand workers provided by the German Federal Employment Agency.

A FORTUNATE CASE? Mechanisms concerning automation could apply everywhere, even in countries such as England and the USA, for which the automation impact forecasts carried out so far sound rather alarming. But the German socio-economic situation is particularly virtuous and could have served as a buffer, influencing the results of the study.

For example, some social safety nets could have allowed the workers who were left without jobs to still access the goods sold, thus avoiding a drop in demand and a contraction of the economy. As you can see, the faults (and the merits) are never just robots …

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