Factory workers
One of the sectors that has already felt the effects of robotics and automation big time is the manufacturing industry. Compared to 2000, there are 5 million fewer jobs in manufacturing in today’s United States, due to the significantly high use of automated workers.
According to a 2015 Ball State University study, approximately 88 percent of the factory workers that lost their jobs between 2000 and 2010 were replaced by robots with a higher working efficiency. Other studies disagree with the Ball State research, saying that the manufacturing job losses were not that dramatic.
Dramatic or not, all information does point out the fact that automation used for assembly lines can cause a significant drop in the number of manufacturing positions for humans.