According to the statistics, this has never happened before: a record high number of robots have been employed in North America in 2021.
About 29 thousand robots are already employed. To see the full picture of 2021, we need to wait another two months. The costs of such an employment have amounted to 1,48 billion dollars, which is by 37% more than in 2020.
Such a boom may be first of all explained by the COVID-19 pandemic, since in view of the quarantine measures lots of companies have incurred great losses with robots being a real alternative to human labor force. The pandemic has also offered an opportunity to make a shift to a more sustainable level of those products that are mostly demanded on the market. Due to the shortage of human labor force, many goods are in scarce supply. There are also some commercial activities that are of no interest to potential laborers since these are performed by robots.
Obviously, robots keep occupying more and more market niches. If before these were automobile industry plants, now the demand for robots increases in the food industry, metallurgy, robotics technology, etc. This means that lots of industries may employ robots and this could be the main direction of development that they are pursuing.
In terms of other countries, the progress never comes to a halt. According to estimates, in 5 years’ time part of jobs in Poland will be performed by robots. It remains to be seen whether it is for the better or worse.