Headlines

• New JRC research discusses the effect of the deployment of industrial robots on employment in the EU. It finds that, even though the share of low-skilled workers declined over the analysed period (1995-2015), there is no evidence that industrial robots contributed to this trend.
• Instead, there is a significant positive association between robot use and total employment. This correlation is most pronounced in the manufacturing sectors but still holds when non-manufacturing sectors are included.
• This suggests that robot-adopting industries have so far been comparatively more resistant to the long-term downward trend in the employment shares of European manufacturing sectors.
• These results stand in contrast to some previous literature and to the widespread notion that robots crowd out workers in general, and low-skilled workers in particular.
• These findings, based on current industrial robot technologies only, cast doubt on the effectiveness of policies such as taxes on robots, which could have unintended negative effects on technical progress and few benefits for workers.