Robots Are Slashing U.S. Wages and Worsening Pay Inequality

[edhopper]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-28/robots-are-slashing-u-s-wages-and-worsening-pay-inequality

Industrial robots have had a "large" and negative effect on U.S. employment and wages in local labor markets, according to new research by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Daron Acemoglu and Boston University's Pascual Restrepo.

One additional robot per thousand workers reduces the employment-to-population ratio by 0.18 percentage points to 0.34 percentage points and slashes wages by 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent, based on their analysis. To put that in context, in the U.S. saw an increase of about one new industrial robot for every thousand workers between 1993 and 2007, based on the study.

"The employment effects of robots are most pronounced in manufacturing, and in particular, in industries most exposed to robots; in routine manual, blue collar, assembly and related occupations; and for workers with less than college education," the authors write. "Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, we do not find positive and offsetting employment gains in any occupation or education groups."

Worth noting: the authors estimate that robots may have increased the wage gap between the top 90th and bottom 10 percent by as much as 1 percentage point between 1990 and 2007. There's also room for much broader robot adoption, which would make all of these effects much bigger.

Those jobs aren't coming back. The fools that voted for Trump are eventually going to have to realize that.

[yallerdawg]

1. What about the miners?

[riversedge]

2. BUILD A WALL-KEEP THEM OUT OF THE U.S.!!

[exboyfil]

3. So how does Germany deal with it?

They use a whole lot more robots, and they have a much tighter wealth inequality spread.

[edhopper]

4. good question

[leftyladyfrommo]

5. They had 2 robots at the carwash.

They look like guys and they hold water hoses that move up and down and spray cars as they go by.

First time I have seen that. There used to be about five guys working
the car wash line. Now there is one. And he also collected the money. Machines do everything. And they do it pretty well.