Progress is scary for many people. Change, in their eyes, brings devastation in its wake. When new technologies emerge that phase out other types of work, it’s assumed that those people will be left with nowhere to go. Boiling this down to a topic all too familiar to us, the same assumption seems to be happening with robots.

You can’t go anywhere on the internet without finding articles claiming that robots will take our jobs. It’s not that simple. In fact, robots are just another form of progress that will create newer, higher paying jobs as they grow and contribute to manufacturing. Join us as we look at how these new jobs will form.

How Robots Will Usher in New and Better Paying Jobs

Innovation and technology breed new industries and therefore, new jobs. Take the internet, for example. A few decades ago, it was something people probably feared, thinking it would put physical stores out of business or something silly like that.

Instead, the internet is now responsible for millions of jobs. Robots are ushering in a similar era, we just don’t realize it yet. Both direct and indirect opportunities are going to be available as a result of increased production. Credit is the true decider of manufacturing economics. If companies have more credit to work with, then they can afford to hire more people.

The production increases will result in an abundance of credit and this will create new jobs and better benefits. People assume that the jobs replaced by robots will not create new ones. When cars began to replace horse-drawn carriages, similar thoughts were no doubt shared by dissenters.

Innovation through robots brings about a dynamic economy where increased production and new concepts reveal more rewarding, less repetitive, better paying jobs. The use of robots in manufacturing will bring about a renaissance that will improve the industry as a whole and expand it by a large margin.

Let’s look at this from a real world perspective. In the case of Amazon, they started automating aspects of their shipping centers. This saved them on shipping costs, which they passed on to the customer. In turn, more people started using Amazon, and thus they were required to hire more human workers to meet the demand.

Amazon draws a line between jobs for people and jobs for robots. People do things that require fine motor skills, judgment, or unpredictability. Robots handle things that are more black and white, like heavy lifting, moving pallets, and bringing items across the warehouse.

In 2016, despite hiring more robots, Amazon actually grew its human workforce by 50%. During the company’s Q4 2016 earnings report, they also outlined plans to create 100,000 new full-time, full-benefit jobs in the US over the course of the next 18 months.

Situations like these showcase how robots are creating new jobs by opening up opportunities and expanding the markets in a variety of industries. Growth in the market creates growth in jobs. Considering this, robots are one of the best job creators we could ask for.

Final Thoughts

Robots are a technological innovation just like the internet, automobiles, and any other major milestone in history. We shouldn’t be afraid of them, instead we should look at all the good they’re doing in our modern economy. They are creating growth and therefore creating jobs in the process.

How have you seen robots creating jobs in our modern economy? Let us know in the comments!