5 million manufacturing jobs is a lot, particularly given that we'd be exporting huge amounts of goods with those robots, which would keep more of our wealth domestic rather than exporting it to improve other nations.
Those robots need to be constructed; R&D'd; improved; maintained; installed; removed; and the robot ecosystem would support millions more jobs. The efficiency gains would justify the expenditures. The US economy will be made over by robots; we have the most efficient, large production economy on the planet, and are still the world's largest manufacturing nation (ahead of China, we export less).
Our labor force participation rate has dropped from 67.5% in 1999/2000, down to 64% now; our U6 unemployment number is 15%. Millions of net job gains by taking manufacturing back from China, would not destroy many jobs at all (domestically), quite the opposite.
Robots are amplifiers of human labor, not replacements. They still must be created, cared for, upgraded, overseen, and so on. The whole point is about one American with 30 robots to manage, becoming as labor efficient on price to output as 30 or more Chinese workers. The improvement scale in robotics is almost limitless; direct human labor however is extraordinarily limited in its capabilities.
5 million new jobs courtesy of taking manufacturing back from China would instantly push our labor force participation rate back up to where it was in 1999. While we'd simultaneously generate a massive pool of new domestic wealth by keeping that money here instead of sending it elsewhere for someone else to benefit from. We'd make more of the goods we consume; and we'd export more goods to the rest of the world. Competing with China is just one example, the reality is we'd want to look to create jobs by competing with everywhere we've lost manufacturing to since 1964 when America had 55% of all global manufacturing.
And then let's remember that efficiency gains produce more wealth. Wealth is not a static pool to be swapped or stolen back and forth. Neither are jobs. It's entirely likely that we'll be able to create entirely new products that are now impossible courtesy of advanced robotic manufacturing, and that will mean completely new jobs, that would not have existed otherwise (versus say taking back old product manufacturing from China or similar).
How robots will affect employment in the u.s. depends on many unknown factors[1].
Since we cannot know those factors today, the best we can do is draw a number of different scenarios.
Let's simplify this to 2 scenarios. One scenario is yours. Another scenario is of larger unemployment. Since it's hard to set probabilities, let's assume they have equal probabilities.
I think this is a more reliable forecast of the future with robots.
[1]how much better u.s. robots will be then non u.s. robots, the cost of shipping, the importance of starting conditions(for example the Chinese supply chain), how many jobs will each robot create and what kinds of jobs,will there be new kinds of jobs created and how many , etc.
Those robots need to be constructed; R&D'd; improved; maintained; installed; removed; and the robot ecosystem would support millions more jobs. The efficiency gains would justify the expenditures. The US economy will be made over by robots; we have the most efficient, large production economy on the planet, and are still the world's largest manufacturing nation (ahead of China, we export less).
Our labor force participation rate has dropped from 67.5% in 1999/2000, down to 64% now; our U6 unemployment number is 15%. Millions of net job gains by taking manufacturing back from China, would not destroy many jobs at all (domestically), quite the opposite.
Robots are amplifiers of human labor, not replacements. They still must be created, cared for, upgraded, overseen, and so on. The whole point is about one American with 30 robots to manage, becoming as labor efficient on price to output as 30 or more Chinese workers. The improvement scale in robotics is almost limitless; direct human labor however is extraordinarily limited in its capabilities.
5 million new jobs courtesy of taking manufacturing back from China would instantly push our labor force participation rate back up to where it was in 1999. While we'd simultaneously generate a massive pool of new domestic wealth by keeping that money here instead of sending it elsewhere for someone else to benefit from. We'd make more of the goods we consume; and we'd export more goods to the rest of the world. Competing with China is just one example, the reality is we'd want to look to create jobs by competing with everywhere we've lost manufacturing to since 1964 when America had 55% of all global manufacturing.
And then let's remember that efficiency gains produce more wealth. Wealth is not a static pool to be swapped or stolen back and forth. Neither are jobs. It's entirely likely that we'll be able to create entirely new products that are now impossible courtesy of advanced robotic manufacturing, and that will mean completely new jobs, that would not have existed otherwise (versus say taking back old product manufacturing from China or similar).