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Companies in advanced economies are investing in automation to close the labor cost gap with developing economies. Cobots, which sit alongside humans to enhance labor productivity in manufacturing, cost less than one-quarter the price of traditional robots, and by 2013, they were already cheaper than human workers in every advanced economy. By enhancing the productivity of humans, automation will likely make manufacturing costs attractive closer to home.
Read the Bain Brief: Labor 2030
Karen Harris is managing director of Bain & Company’s Macro Trends Group and is based in the firm’s New York office. Austin Kimson is director of Bain’s Macro Trends Group and is based in the Dallas office. Andrew Schwedel is a partner in the New York office.
Macro Trends Insights
Demographics, automation and inequality could dramatically reshape our world in the 2020s and beyond. Our insights discuss how executives can prepare for the new global economy.
First published in März 2018