**Annual installations of industrial robots worldwide. | Source: IFR
 

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) has released a report that will please some and make others nervous. It turns out that the number of industrial robots in the world has doubled over the past decade. Now there are 151 robots for every 10,000 workers in the manufacturing industry, a figure that clearly demonstrates that the future, where machines are behind machines, has already arrived.

Asian countries turned out to be especially "robotic". In South Korea, there are as many as 1,000 robots for the same 10,000 people — apparently, people there have finally shifted all the work to their mechanical colleagues. China, although lagging behind in terms of density, is leading in terms of adoption rates — it seems that they have decided to compensate for the consequences of the "one family, one child" policy by mass purchasing robots.

Interestingly, the electronics industry has become the leader in automation, overtaking the traditional champion, the automotive industry. Now, somewhere in a smartphone factory, a soldering iron robot can longingly recall the days when its ancestors proudly welded car bodies in car factories.

IFR is proud to announce that robots have become "more collaborative" — that is, they have learned to work alongside people without crippling them at every opportunity. This is certainly progress, although it's hard to say whether employees are happy about it, who now see how their metal competitors don't require lunch breaks and don't go on vacation.

The federation's experts are modestly silent about where the released workers are going. Apparently, it is assumed that they magically turn into programmers and roboticists — although, as practice shows, retraining a welder into an IT specialist takes a little longer than installing a new robot on a production line.

As noted on jobtorob.com Perhaps it's time to think about acquiring skills that will be in demand in the new automated world. Although, according to the IFR report, AI will soon replace programmers, and then we'll all just have to watch robots write code for other robots.

However, not everything is so sad. The same report says that automation creates new jobs in related industries. However, these are usually highly qualified positions that a former assembly line worker will not be hired for without serious retraining.

One can only hope that someday robots will learn how to pay taxes — then at least the state budget will not suffer from their total attack on jobs. In the meantime, we have to be content with the fact that at least they do not require a social package and do not organize strikes.