Research On The Influence Of Robot Application On Employment In Guangdong Province

Since the birth of the concept of Industry 4.0 in 2011,China has set off an upsurge in the development of artificial intelligence.As the frontier of China reform and opening up,Guangdong province is following the forefront of technology closely,speeding up the deployment of artificial intelligence industry,large-scale application of industrial robots,and promoting the upgrading and transformation of manufacturing.At the same time,robots quickly "capture" conventional manufacturing positions by virtue of their advantages such as low cost,accuracy and stability of task execution,squeezing out a large number of low-and medium-skilled labor,and accelerating the process of replacing demographic dividends with technological dividends.Unemployment is faintly rising.In the context of a new round of technological shocks and profound changes in the employment pattern,it is of great practical significance to study the employment changes in Guangdong province under the advancement of robotics and other automation technologies.This paper combs the relevant theories of automation technology progress,and analyzes the impact mechanism of robots and other automation technology progress on the job market based on the task allocation model.Using a combination of macro and micro,the changes in the employment scale,employment structure and employment quality of Guangdong province under the application of robots are discussed.At the macro level,using Guangdong province as the research object,using the industrial robot installation data(2009-2017)provided by the International Federation of Robotics in China,the robot technology impact index of 21prefecture-level cities is measured to describe the degree of robot application,and the fixed effects model is used to conduct empirical analysis on the employment scale and structure changes of 21 cities in Guangdong province under the impact of robot technology.At the micro level,this article intercepted the employment data of Guangdong province in the Chinese Social Survey(2017 、 2019),and discussed the employment characteristics of workers vulnerable to the impact of machine replacement and changes in their employment quality.The research results show that the application of robots is reshaping the employment pattern in Guangdong.First,while the application of robots has a negative impact on employment in the manufacturing industry,it has promoted employment growth in the modern service industry through mechanisms such as productivity effects,scale effects,and employment spillover effects.Eventually,the total employment in Guangdong province has shown an increasing trend.Second,the application of robots will help optimize the employment structure of the manufacturing industry in Guangdong province,replace low-tech and low-tech manufacturing jobs,and at the same time force the supply of talents for hightech and high-tech manufacturing jobs.The third is that machine replacement has a negative impact on the current employment quality of workers.Among them,workers with low education,weak professional skills,and conventional manufacturing jobs are more likely to be affected by machine replacement and become unemployed.Further sub-sample research shows that the lower employment quality of workers caused by machine replacement is mainly driven by medium-skilled workers,while the employment quality of high-skilled workers performs well in machine replacement.