The World’s Most Automated Economy Has a Lower Unemployment Rate Than We Do
The world’s most automated economy has a lower unemployment rate than we do. South Korea employs four industrial robots for everyone in the United States according the International Federation of Robotics. The outcome? An unemployment rate of 3.6% compared to 4.3% in the United States. The takeaway is this; the relationship between us and machine coworkers is no longer a zero sum game. From this South Korea gives a peek a what our working future may look like, so why are South Koreans still afraid?
Hankook Mirae unveiled the METHOD-2 large manned robot project last year. One man North Korean ass kicking machine or future mechanized co-worker optimized to steal gum out of your cubicle when you call in sick? Stay tuned.
Robot Density is the term. Measure of a country's robot to worker ratio, recently devised to measuring the pulling of human hands away from the workplace. The new measure has revealed not only who the early adopters are, but why they're moving in this direction. Daniel Kim, an analyst at Macquarie has cited South Korea’s rapid adaptation to two key factors. First, the rising cost of labor in Korea has driven companies to think outside of their increasingly over-educated workforce. The second, an almost desperate need for more workers.
“... in Korea, it’s more automated. Korean labour costs are rising every year, so companies have to adopt more robots to survive and remain cost-competitive.” Daniel Kim
Seoul’s aggressive mechanization tells us that robots arrive when companies can’t find people. Not as an initiative to rid itself of willing work as was previously assumed. Korea’s workforce is shrinking by two percent annually since 1995. With a proudly college bound population with little interest blue collar work, employers have grown use to having positions go unfilled for years. In response the country has moved aggressively towards a cyborg economy, with $450 million budgeted by the South Korea government for research and investment in the field over the next five years. A shining picture, or a shriveling veneer? While the scenario appears to breath calm into our robot anxiety, for many at Seoul's factory floors see this, as silence before the storm.
The notion that South Korea rapid mechanization coupled with its stable unemployment is only half of the picture. Korea’s overall unemployment rate is a healthy 3.6%, but it’s you're a millennial in the world’s most robotic economy, this is not your story. Youth unemployment has reached a contemporary all time high in South Korea, staggering to 8.2% this November (1 percentage point below the US in the same period). So what is it? Are the doors into the workforce being slammed on recent graduates by robotic hands? Here’s our conclusion.
South Korea’s economy helps us understand that adding robots to a workforce does not lead to throwing people out of it. With the US (4.7% unemployment) being the world’s fourth most automated economy and the two countries that have adapted more robots than us, Germany (3.9% unemployment) and Japan (2.8% unemployment), further enforce this coming reality. What South Korea’s struggle does tell us is that some things will never change. New age changes are still no match for age old problems. As South Korea’s graduates struggle to find a place in it’s futuristic economy the follow remains true. Provide everyone with the work they seek is a challenge that’s going to be around for a long time coming, but technology can no longer serve as an excuse.
