Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arbys drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks.
It doesnt call sick, says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI voice at its Arbys franchise this year in Ontario, California. It doesnt get corona. And the reliability of it is great.
The pandemic didnt just threaten Americans health when it slammed the U.S. in 2020 -- it may also have posed a long-term threat to many of their jobs.
Faced with worker shortages and higher labor costs, companies are starting to automate service sector jobs that economists once considered safe, assuming that machines couldnt easily provide the human contact they believed customers would demand.
Past experience suggests that such automation waves eventually create more jobs than they destroy, but that they also disproportionately wipe out less skilled jobs that many low-income workers depend on. Resulting growing pains for the U.S. economy could be severe.
If not for the pandemic, Siddiqi probably wouldnt have bothered investing in new technology that could alienate existing employees and some customers. But its gone smoothly, he says: Basically, theres less people needed but those folks are now working in the kitchen and other areas.
Ideally, automation can redeploy workers into better and more interesting work, so long as they can get the appropriate technical training, says Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands. But although thats happening now, its not moving quickly enough, he says.
Worse, an entire class of service jobs created when manufacturing began to deploy more automation may now be at risk. The robots escaped the manufacturing sector and went into the much larger service sector, he says. I regarded contact jobs as safe. I was completely taken by surprise.
Improvements in robot technology allow machines to do many tasks that previously required people -- tossing pizza dough, transporting hospital linens, inspecting gauges, sorting goods. The pandemic accelerated their adoption. Robots, after all, cant get sick or spread disease. Nor do they request time off to handle unexpected childcare emergencies.
Economists at the International Monetary Fund found that past pandemics had encouraged firms to invest in machines in ways that could boost productivity -- but also kill low-skill jobs. Our results suggest that the concerns about the rise of the robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified, they wrote in a January paper.
The consequences could fall most heavily on the less-educated women who disproportionately occupy the low- and mid-wage jobs most exposed to automation -- and to viral infections. Those jobs include salesclerks, administrative assistants, cashiers and aides in hospitals and those who take care of the sick and elderly.
Employers seem eager to bring on the machines. A survey last year by the nonprofit World Economic Forum found that 43% of companies planned to reduce their workforce as a result of new technology. Since the second quarter of 2020, business investment in equipment has grown 26%, more than twice as fast as the overall economy.
The fastest growth is expected in the roving machines that clean the floors of supermarkets, hospitals and warehouses, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group. The same group also expects an uptick in sales of robots that provide shoppers with information or deliver room service orders in hotels.
Restaurants have been among the most visible robot adopters. In late August, for instance, the salad chain Sweetgreen announced it was buying kitchen robotics startup Spyce, which makes a machine that cooks up vegetables and grains and spouts them into bowls.
Its not just robots, either -- software and AI-powered services are on the rise as well. Starbucks has been automating the behind-the-scenes work of keeping track of a stores inventory. More stores have moved to self-checkout.
Scott Lawton, CEO of the Arlington, Virginia-based restaurant chain Bartaco, was having trouble last fall getting servers to return to his restaurants when they reopened during the pandemic.
So he decided to do without them. With the help of a software firm, his company developed an online ordering and payment system customers could use over their phones. Diners now simply scan a barcode at the center of each table to access a menu and order their food without waiting for a server. Workers bring food and drinks to their tables. And when theyre done eating, customers pay over their phones and leave.
The innovation has shaved the number of staff, but workers arent necessarily worse off. Each Bartaco location there are 21 now has up to eight assistant managers, roughly double the pre-pandemic total. Many are former servers, and they roam among the tables to make sure everyone has what they need. They are paid annual salaries starting at $55,000 rather than hourly wages.
Tips are now shared among all the other employees, including dishwashers, who now typically earn $20 an hour or more, far higher than their pre-pandemic pay. We dont have the labor shortages that youre reading about on the news, Lawton says.
The uptick in automation has not stalled a stunning rebound in the U.S. jobs market -- at least so far.
The U.S. economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs in March and April 2020, when the pandemic gale hit the U.S. Hiring has since bounced back briskly: Employers have brought back 17 million jobs since April 2020. In June, they posted a record 10.1 million job openings and are complaining that they cant find enough workers.
Behind the hiring boom is a surge in spending by consumers, many of whom got through the crisis in unexpectedly good shape financially -- thanks to both federal relief checks and, in many cases, savings accumulated by working from home and skipping the daily commute.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, expects employers are likely to be scrambling for workers for a long time.
For one thing, many Americans are taking their time returning to work -- some because theyre still worried about COVID-19 health risks and childcare problems, others because of generous federal unemployment benefits, set to expire nationwide Sept. 6.
In addition, large numbers of Baby Boom workers are retiring. The labor market is going to be very, very tight for the foreseeable future, Zandi says.
For now, the short-term benefits of the economic snapback are overwhelming any job losses from automation, whose effects tend to show up gradually over a period of years. That may not last. Last year, researchers at the University of Zurich and University of British Columbia found that the so-called jobless recoveries of the past 35 years, in which economic output rebounded from recessions faster than employment, could be explained by the loss of jobs vulnerable to automation.
Despite strong hiring since the middle of last year, the U.S. economy is still 5.3 million jobs short of what it had in February 2020. And Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, calculated last month that 40% of the missing jobs are vulnerable to automation, especially those in food preparation, retail sales and manufacturing.
Some economists worry that automation pushes workers into lower-paid positions. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University estimated in June that up to 70% of the stagnation in U.S. wages between 1980 and 2016 could be explained by machines replacing humans doing routine tasks.
Many of the jobs that get automated were at the middle of the skill distribution, Acemoglu says. They dont exist anymore, and the workers that used to perform them are now doing lower-skill jobs.
View post:
Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after COVID - USA TODAY
- Tasker updated with powerful new Android 15 automation features - Android Police - May 17th, 2024 [May 17th, 2024]
- Exploring Stereo Imaging and Automation at the Machine Vision Summit - Novus Light Technologies Today - May 17th, 2024 [May 17th, 2024]
- Yellow.ai unveils Email Automation feature for streamlined support - IT Brief New Zealand - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Automation in Biopharma Industry Propels Market Growth with Emerging Trends - Global Forecast to 2028 - Yahoo Finance - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Ginkgo Bioworks: Pioneering Healthcare's Future with Drug Development Automation - BNN Breaking - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Inspiring cloud automation - The Register - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Clinical Lab Automation Market to Reach $3.72 Billion by 2030 Amid Technological Advancements - PR Newswire - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- #ETFutureForwardME: Hiring and onboarding right with AI and automation, ETHRWorldME - ETHRWorld Middle East - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- How Document Digitization, Process Automation Can Help Rebuild Trust - GovCIO Media & Research - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Iraq's Customs starts using ASYCUDA automation system in Umm Qasr - Iraqi News - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Robot Software Market: Powering the Future of Automation ,Analysis and Forecast 2023-2029 - WhaTech - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- ImageSource Unveils ILINX AI for Intelligent Process Automation - PR Newswire - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- The Evolving Landscape of APIs: Integration, Automation, and AI - EnterpriseTalk - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Gen AI isn't the only tech driving automation in banking - Finextra - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Navigating the Future: The Shift Towards Level 3 Automation in the Automotive Industry - Medriva - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Automation and Controls Market is Rapidly Growing with Huge Application Scope and Opportunities by 2030 - EIN News - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Winning the Game: Essentials skills to survive AI, LLMs and Automation - DataDrivenInvestor - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Industrial Metrology Market Set to Hit $17.96 Billion by 2030, Driven by Automation and Quality Demand - BNN Breaking - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Automation tools Archives - Milwaukee Community Journal - The Milwaukee Community Journal - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Industrial Automation Market to Receive Overwhelming Hike In Revenue That Will Boost Overall Industry Growth - EIN News - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Lutra AI launches to make building automated AI workflows easy - SiliconANGLE News - December 9th, 2023 [December 9th, 2023]
- AI meets materials science: the promise and pitfalls of automated discovery - VentureBeat - December 9th, 2023 [December 9th, 2023]
- SPS Fair 2023 - The Latest Industrial Automation Trends - IoT Analytics - December 9th, 2023 [December 9th, 2023]
- Top WorkTech News From the Week of December 8th: Updates from Infor, Automation Anywhere, IFS, and More - Solutions Review - December 9th, 2023 [December 9th, 2023]
- Nividous and RCG Global Services Focus on Empowering Healthcare and Life Sciences Organizations with Intelligent ... - PR Newswire - December 9th, 2023 [December 9th, 2023]
- Automation and Communication to Streamline Deliveries - Supply and Demand Chain Executive - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Future of Employment in an Era of Automation - Drishti IAS - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- From legacy to automation: Spirent's impact on network validation - ETCIO - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Genghis Grill Partners with Flybuy on Off-Premises Automation - FSR magazine - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Q&A: Workday exec talks hospitality and automated, scalable finance - Smartbrief - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Home Automation Market Size to Worth Around USD 788.33 BN by ... - InvestorsObserver - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Network automation market set to surge over the next decade - ChannelLife Australia - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Mitsubishi Electric agrees strategic investment in Otto Motors to ... - Robotics and Automation News - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Roots Automation Introduces InsurGPT - the World's Most Advanced ... - PR Newswire - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Research Shows Ways Digital Print and Automation Power Profitability - Printing Impressions - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Rockwell Automation Inc. stock outperforms market on strong trading day - MarketWatch - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Is It Too Late To Consider Buying Presto Automation Inc. (NASDAQ:PRST)? - Yahoo Finance - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- U.S. Companies Embrace Automation and Digitization - CPAPracticeAdvisor.com - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Byron Centers SpartanNash Ups Customer Service with Robotic ... - DBusiness - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Why KYC automation is key to business growth strategies - FinTech Magazine - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Leading Ireland & UK Industrial Automation company NeoDyne ... - Process & Control Today - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Automation Testing Market: Industry Overview, Size, Share and ... - Digital Journal - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Accelerate your speed of business with IBM Event Automation - IBM Newsroom - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- 3M Brings Innovation to the Manufacturing Supply Chain Environment - MarketScale - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Jitterbit Survey Reveals Low-Code Application Platforms Play an ... - GlobeNewswire - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Turning value into actions: How leaders can use automation and AI ... - Elite Business Magazine - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Automation will combat stagnation | theHRD - The HR Director Magazine - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- MG Tech Unveils New Palletizer with Yaskawa Cobot and Rockwell ... - Packaging Strategies - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- How automation technology helped Cainiao deliver more than 200 ... - Parcel and Postal Technology International - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- IT Priorities 2023: Business automation intensifies as data ... - ComputerWeekly.com - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Milking Automation Market Size, Share And Growth Analysis For 2023-2032 - EIN News - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Digitise your SMEs for Success: How can HR Automation empower you to Stay Ahead of the Game? - People Matters - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Verified acquires Pliance to compliment digital signatures with AML ... - Biometric Update - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- HireVue acquires Modern Hire to bolster hiring automation capabilities - HR Dive - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Advanced thermal imager for industrial automation, inspection ... - AZoM - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Warehouse Automation Survey 2023: More robots are coming to a ... - Modern Materials Handling - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Agriculture Automation and Control Systems Market Untapped ... - Digital Journal - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Himachal Pradesh Government Prioritizes Digitization and ... - TheNewsHimachal - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- An IT Executive's Guide to Automation - free eGuide - Neowin - May 15th, 2023 [May 15th, 2023]
- Are You Looking for a Top Momentum Pick? Why Rockwell Automation (ROK) is a Great Choice - Zacks Investment Research - February 20th, 2023 [February 20th, 2023]
- Industrial Automation Sensors Market is Predicted to Hit a Revenue of USD 37.76 Billion by Growing with a CAGR of 9.12% During 2022-2028; Growing... - February 20th, 2023 [February 20th, 2023]
- Declining Stock and Decent Financials: Is The Market Wrong About Honeywell Automation India Limited (NSE:HONAUT)? - Simply Wall St - February 20th, 2023 [February 20th, 2023]
- What is Automation? - ISA - International Society of Automation - February 5th, 2023 [February 5th, 2023]
- Free Online PLC Training from AutomationDirect - February 5th, 2023 [February 5th, 2023]
- Investing in Rockwell Automation (NYSE:ROK) five years ago would have delivered you a 65% gain - Simply Wall St - February 5th, 2023 [February 5th, 2023]
- The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Market size was valued at USD 2.27 billion in 2021 and is predicted to reach USD 18.69 billion by 2030, with a... - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- Bill would give North Dakota manufacturers a tax break on automation - The Center Square - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- I just watched McDonald's next step into automation and why are you so mad about it? - ZDNet - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- What if your colleague is a bot? Harnessing the benefits of workplace automation without alienating staff - The Conversation - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- Will Hollysys Automation Technologies Ltd (HOLI) Stay at the Top of the Industrials Sector? - InvestorsObserver - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- Valmet Oyj : to supply automation to three waste-to-energy plants in Sungnam City, Korea - Marketscreener.com - January 10th, 2023 [January 10th, 2023]
- How Automation Can Bridge The Gap Between Internal Operations And Customer Service Excellence - Forbes - December 26th, 2022 [December 26th, 2022]
- The Global Industrial Automation And Control Systems Market size is expected to reach $301.8 billion by 2028, rising at a market growth of 10.0% CAGR... - December 26th, 2022 [December 26th, 2022]
- Introducing the Automation Kit for Power Platform - December 16th, 2022 [December 16th, 2022]
- Salesforce com : Launches Automation Everywhere Bundle to Help Companies Lower Costs, Boost Productivity, and Deliver Success Now - Marketscreener.com - December 2nd, 2022 [December 2nd, 2022]
- ACE Convergence Acquisition Corp. and Tempo Automation, Inc. Announce Closing of Business Combination; Tempo Automation Holdings, Inc. to Trade on... - November 27th, 2022 [November 27th, 2022]
- Global automation major Diebold Nixdorf expands presence in India with Bengaluru facility - The Economic Times - November 27th, 2022 [November 27th, 2022]
- Structural Health Monitoring Market Report 2022: Increasing Requirement for Standardization and Automation for the Repair and Maintenance of Civil and... - November 19th, 2022 [November 19th, 2022]
- The mining automation market size is expected to grow from USD 3.1 billion in 2022 to USD 4.2 billion by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of... - November 19th, 2022 [November 19th, 2022]
- Cisco study: Network teams look to SDN, automation to manage multicloud operations - Network World - November 16th, 2022 [November 16th, 2022]