Robots and labour in the service sector from buzai232's blog

Robots and labour in the service sector

Firm-level studies are important for understanding how robots augment some types of labour while substituting for others, yet evidence outside manufacturing is scarce. This column reports on one of the first studies of service sector robots, which suggests that robot adoption has increased some employment opportunities, provided greater flexibility, and helped to mitigate turnover problems among long-term care workers. The wave of technologies that inspires fear in many countries may be a remedy for the social and economic challenges posed by population ageing in others.To get more news about GRS, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

Robots hold polar extremes in economic narrative and popular imagination. One narrative depicts a looming dystopian future with robots and other forms of automation increasingly replacing human workers, depressing wages (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014), feeding inequality, and contributing to further ‘deaths of despair’ (Case and Deaton 2020, Mulligan 2021). In counter-imaginations, robots embody innovative technology spurring productivity and freeing workers from repetitive, strenuous, monotonous work while helping to relieve labour shortages arising from ageing populations. Such demographic challenges are salient particularly in higher-income countries farther along in the demographic transition, such as the OECD nations, where populations in 18 out of the 36 countries are projected to decline by 2055. These nations face rising old-age dependency ratios, declining employment-to-population ratios, and challenges in providing services to the growing number of frail older adults.

Indeed, demography can explain substantial differences in development and diffusion of robotics and automation technologies (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2018, Prettner and Bloom 2020). Even in the younger US, Varian (2020) posits that reduced labour supply from population ageing will offset the reduction in demand from automation for many years to come (after labour markets heal from the current pandemic). The rosier narrative about robotics may also encompass their use in hospitals, nursing homes, and other care settings as complements to telemedicine and physical distancing to protect frail populations during a pandemic like COVID-19 or in future seasonal influenza epidemics.

Several empirical studies have corroborated aspects of the first, negative view, including evidence that robots reduce manufacturing employment and wages (e.g. Acemoglu and Restrepo 2020, Dauth et al. 2017, Dixon et al. 2019, Bessen 2019). Yet evidence from the service sector remains scant, especially firm-level studies that go beyond anecdote to probe the impact of robots used in providing services that ageing populations increasingly need, like long-term care.

Learning from an early adopter
Japan’s experiences may be especially instructive, given its declining overall population, increasing proportion of seniors, and aversion to large-scale immigration, alongside technological prowess in many aspects of robotics and automation. Despite recognition that robots may be a poor substitute for many tasks demanding empathy and dexterity in the caring professions,1 Japan has been an early adopter of robots to address the shortage of care workers relative to growing demand for long-term care services, including assistance with basic activities of daily living such as eating, toileting, and bathing (see Figure 1). Official projections indicate a shortfall of 380,000 care workers by 2025 (MHLW 2017), in part because care workers often experience physical repercussions such as lower back pain, while receiving wages barely exceeding the minimum wage.2