A new study suggests robots are not friends of the American worker.
An analysis of labor trends between 1990 and 2007 by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research finds the increase in robots in the U.S. economy has resulted in fewer jobs and lower wages.
Recommended For You
"According to our estimates, one more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio by about 0.18-0.34 percentage points and wages by 0.25-0.5 percent," write Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, both professors of economics at MIT.
Unfortunately, they predict, the negative impact of mechanization will likely become even more dramatic in the coming years.
While workers being displaced by machines is hardly a new phenomenon, the rapid pace of technological innovation in recent years has led to talk of an economy in which a large share of the population is rendered obsolete by robot labor that is faster and cheaper.
Whether such a world will be a better place for the average person is a topic of ongoing debate.
If machines abolish the need for humans to work, humans will have to figure out is how to distribute the prosperity generated by robots among the populace.
"Eventually, in our distant Star Trek future, we might get rid of money and prices altogether, as soaring productivity allows society to provide people with all they need at near-zero cost," suggested Ryan Avent in a column in the Guardian last year.
There are even more profound cultural and psychological issues to confront if people don't have or don't need jobs.
"The unemployed theoretically have the most time to socialize, and yet studies have shown that they feel the most social isolation; it is surprisingly hard to replace the camaraderie of the water cooler," wrote Derek Thompson in the Atlantic in 2015.
Lawrence Summers, a former president of Harvard and former Secretary of the Treasury, told Thompson he had recently begun to rethink the effects of technological innovation.
"Until a few years ago, I didn't think this was a very complicated subject: the Luddites were wrong, and the believers in technology and technological progress were right. I'm not so completely certain now," he said.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
