Robots have quietly arrived. Can they fill the global labor gap?

Recently, the British "Financial Times" website published an article titled "To Save the World: Robots Need to Arrive Faster", written by Ruchir Sharma. The article believes that as the global economy faces labor shortages, most countries need more robots to maintain growth vitality. The full text is excerpted as follows:

Not long ago, people were writing and publishing books about how the “rise of robots” would lead to an “unemployable future”, as well as authoritative predictions It is said that the upcoming automation may put half of the jobs in a certain country at risk.

However, the recent jobs report raises another threat: not whether robots will replace humans, but whether robots can arrive in time to save the global economy from labor shortages.

Currently, the global unemployment rate is 4.5%, the lowest level since global records began in 1980.

This pressure is now at a fever pitch, largely because the growth of the labor force has begun to slow and the proportion of seniors is increasing. The acceleration of aging is the delayed result of social shifts that began decades ago: women are having fewer children and medical advances have increased life expectancy.

In nearly 40 countries, including the world's major economies, the working-age population has shrunk. In the early 1980s, this was the case in only two countries.

A shrinking workforce will almost certainly lead to slower economic growth among other factors, so most countries will need more robots to keep growth going.

Technology pessimists are still sounding the alarm. As the pandemic recedes and layoffs are laid off, the specter of robots stealing jobs and cutting wages will resurface, they say. Regardless, underlying demographic trends predict that shortages will continue.

The most severely affected countries include Japan, Germany and other countries. By 2030, the labor force is expected to shrink by at least 400,000 people per year. It’s no coincidence that robots are already present in large numbers in these countries and that their numbers are still growing.

Governments can respond to labor shortages in other ways: offering bonuses to parents who have many children, encouraging women to find work or return to work, welcoming immigrants or raising the retirement age. However, all of these steps have the potential to trigger resistance.

Bots elicited a mixed response, a vague concern about machines and artificial intelligence. This concern is mainly reflected in books, and is rarely seen in protests against robots stealing jobs. At the same time, robots still arrived quietly, and no one can dispute this.

Like previous innovations, robots will kill some professions and create new ones. The gas engine made horse-drawn carriage drivers redundant, but gave rise to the profession of taxi driver. About one-third of the jobs created in a given country are in fields that did not exist or were almost non-existent 25 years ago.

The OECD says that one-third of current jobs “will undergo fundamental changes over the next 15 to 20 years.” As the “future of unemployment” suggests, technology disrupts the status quo rather than destroys it outright.

Each robot can replace 3 or more workers, and factory workers are the most affected group. The degree of disruption depends on the pace of change, which is often exaggerated. Forecasters have been predicting since the 1950s that full-fledged artificial intelligence would appear within 20 years, but it has not happened until now.

Today, a recession is imminent, but unemployment is unlikely to be as high as it once was, again because of a shrinking labor force. During the economic cycle, even if the number of robots continues to double, the decline in the number of workers will make the job market tighter than usual.

The impact of childbearing on the labor force will take years to become apparent, but today smart governments will take action to attract more women, immigrants, the elderly and robots into the workforce. Otherwise we will be faced with fewer employees, automated or not, and a future without growth. ​

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