The Robots-Are-Taking-Our-Jobs Threat Gets Real
The coronavirus is hastening the need for a labor force that doesn’t get sick or locked down.
Social distancing on the early shift.
Photographer: VCG/Getty
If there was ever a good time for the robots-taking-over-jobs argument, this may be it. Not just because factory owners don’t want to pay for rising labor costs, but because workers don’t want to gather every day in petri dishes.
Chinese manufacturing is facing a challenge since employees returned to production lines: keeping them on the job. Some companies reported a 90% turnover in workforce after the economy started reopening in March, compared to 25% to 30% in a normal, pre-coronavirus year. Such spikes are expected worldwide as lockdowns ease. The pandemic has made “humans the risk to continued operations” in supply chains, note analysts from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Leave aside how businesses reopen. The bigger question is, how will they be thinking about the future of their factories?