The Impact Of Industrial Robot Applications On Labor Employment

Human society has entered the fourth round of scientific and technological revolution.As an important force in the new round of scientific and technological revolution,the development of artificial intelligence industry is of great significance to high-quality development.As one of the most widely used technologies in the field of artificial intelligence,the application of industrial robots optimizes the production structure of enterprises and improves the production efficiency of enterprises.The application of industrial robots has a significant impact on labor employment in China’s manufacturing industry,and its impact mechanism is relatively complex.The research on this issue can supplement relevant domestic theories and guide the formulation of industrial policies,which has important theoretical and practical significance.This paper follows the idea of "theoretical analysis-empirical analysis-conclusions and suggestions" to carry out research.First of all,this paper combs the domestic and foreign literature and concludes that industrial robots have substitution effects,creation effects and productivity effects on labor employment.In theoretical analysis,the substitution effect and creation effect are defined as the factor-expanding technology of industrial robots for labor employment,and the productivity effect is defined as the efficiency of industrial robots in labor employment.The mathematical model is deduced,and it is found that the application of industrial robots has an uncertain influence on the sum of the substitution effect and the creation effect of labor employment,while the direction of the productivity effect is positive.Then,this paper uses the Chinese industrial enterprise database and the Chinese customs database,and adopts a two-way fixed effect model to study the impact of industrial robots on the employment of manufacturing labor from the enterprise level and the industry level,which provides a certain reference for the formulation of relevant policies for the application of robots in China.The study found that at the enterprise level,the application of industrial robots has a greater substitution effect on labor employment in the manufacturing industry than the creation effect and productivity effect,and enterprises that apply industrial robots reduce labor employment by an average of 15.06%.The result remained significant after excluding endogeneity and performing a series of robustness tests.This crowding-out effect is more pronounced in high-tech enterprises and alleviated in state-owned enterprises.From the perspective of the impact mechanism,the substitution effect reduces labor demand by increasing the capital intensity of enterprises,and the creativity effect and productivity effect increase labor demand by expanding the scale of enterprises and improving the efficiency of enterprises respectively.At the industry level,the three mechanisms for the impact of industrial robot applications on labor demand still exist,but at this time the creation effect and productivity effect are greater than the substitution effect.On the one hand,the labor force squeezed out at the enterprise level does not flow out of the industry,but stays in other enterprises in the industry.On the other hand,the productivity effect brought by the application expands the profit margin of the industry,which increases the number of enterprises in the industry and increases the demand for labor employment.Ultimately,the application of industrial robots has a positive impact on the employment of labor at the industry level.This paper believes that,on the one hand,the country’s support policies for robot application should be differentiated,and the government should support more enterprises in the high-tech industry to apply robots,thereby improving the production efficiency of the industry and expanding the scale of the industry.On the other hand,in the process of promoting intelligent manufacturing,the government should reduce the cost of labor mobility,promote the reemployment of labor in the industry,and keep labor in the labor market.Furthermore,the state should promote the development of the domestic robot industry,reduce the cost of applying robots to enterprises,so as to improve the robot application tendency of enterprises,and ultimately improve the production efficiency of the manufacturing industry.