Robots create more jobs than they displace

The statistics mainly point to reduction in employment in manufacturing in the developed countries, but this is often a small reduction. It coincides with an increase in output and an increase in robotics use except in the case of Japan.
 
The extra number that have gained employment in the years 2000 to 2008 is far greater than the small numbers losing their jobs in manufacturing.
 
The new jobs have been in:
1) distribution and services, Some of the distribution jobs are the result of manufacturers outsourcing their distribution. In the past these jobs would have been classified as part of manufacturing.
2) and also in new manufacturing applications, particularly using technology advances to create new consumer products [mobile phones, computers, games etc].
 
In the industrialising countries, as could be expected, there has been a sharp rise in employment in manufacturing, as well as increase in output.
 
Productivity increases are not just caused by automation and robotics, but it is one of three main factors, along with increased size of manufacturing plants and the globalisation of sourcing. Note: while the IFR numbers provide a clear basis from which to work, it has not always been possible to separate robotics from automation in our analyses.
 
Where automation displaces people in manufacturing it almost always increases output. In some cases it allows such an increase in production and related decrease in unit price, that it creates a whole new market and generates the need for downstream jobs to get the product to the consumer. It releases employees for other, often new jobs outside manufacturing. Historically, this has always been the case.
 
An alternative view is that this displacement in the future will be more difficult to place, as service robotics may take over many of the new job opportunities in human tasks such as in banking, fast food chains, and retailing petrol forecourts.
 
What is likely is that the growth of the production, marketing, selling and maintaining service robots will create the next wave of employment.