Growth, jobs and the digital transformation

Abstract

Production is being transformed by advances in fields such as big data, 3D printing, machine-to-machine communication and robots. Comparable and representative data for 2015 on the deployment of industrial robot technologies, for example, show that Korea and Japan lead in terms of robot intensity (i.e. the industrial stock of robots over manufacturing value added). Robot intensity in these economies is about three times that of the average OECD country. Selected Eastern European countries also emerge as intensive robot users, perhaps mirroring their specialisation within manufacturing value chains and their possible role as suppliers of large multinational corporations. Robot intensity in Czech Republic, Hungary, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia has increased three to six times since 2005, considerably above the average growth rate for OECD or EU28 countries (+29% and 54%, respectively). Robot intensity in BRICS economies has also increased, while remaining relatively low compared to OECD countries. In particular, robot intensity in China increased from 23% to 88% of that of the United States. However, these figures should be interpreted with caution, since the indicators are based on the quantity of robots active in an economy at a specific moment and do not capture changes in the effectiveness or quality of robots over time.