I’ve been having trouble reconcilling compelling evidence for and against automation based job loss / wage suppression, and usually the arguments against them look at super high level macroeconomic numbers (see: Pail Krugman’s analysis on productivity dropping for some recent years) while most people in support of the automation argument will go directly on the ground to places where auto manufacturers have had strong presence and also cite cohort analysis where laid off manufacturing workers take up gig jobs.
The primary impetus for automation are labor cost related but not necessarily to take over humans intrinsically. The top reason I heard uttered in my amateur research was a common theme of the past 100+ years - unions make things more costly whether in terms of capital or general speed / agility of the business. Wages are suppressed through automation effects noticeably around factories that automate compared to nearby cities that don’t. The suppression is concurrently correlated to labor suppression / arbitrage though so it is hard to detangle the automation v. labor angle because the biggest job losses and wage suppression happened before modern automation - they happened during the late 80s to 90s as unionization started dropping faster. Diminishing returns on outright hard balling unions would lead to more investment in machinery to drive down hiring needs and avoid the need to hire while also putting the companies that do automate in a better operational cost position.
We build quite the "contraception" for circuit board mounting anything not compatible with reflow soldering. It mostly works but the women that do it usually are just way faster and less error prone.
We have quite the high wage standard and even then the device is mostly used to show off.
Real automation is probably needed in bureaucratic workflows even if we usually think about manufacturing. There are probably advantages and disadvantages here as well.
Since order situation is great at my current company (strangely the covid-quarter was particularly good), we have significantly expanded workforce in production.
I doubt that unions really drove automation in my country though. Price plays a role but also technological feasibility.
The primary impetus for automation are labor cost related but not necessarily to take over humans intrinsically. The top reason I heard uttered in my amateur research was a common theme of the past 100+ years - unions make things more costly whether in terms of capital or general speed / agility of the business. Wages are suppressed through automation effects noticeably around factories that automate compared to nearby cities that don’t. The suppression is concurrently correlated to labor suppression / arbitrage though so it is hard to detangle the automation v. labor angle because the biggest job losses and wage suppression happened before modern automation - they happened during the late 80s to 90s as unionization started dropping faster. Diminishing returns on outright hard balling unions would lead to more investment in machinery to drive down hiring needs and avoid the need to hire while also putting the companies that do automate in a better operational cost position.