For its global ‘Advanced Robotics in the Factory of the Future’ survey , the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) surveyed 1,300 companies. The survey found that participants in Germany expect to see fewer jobs cuts than participants in other countries. Only 2% of the German respondents think that the use of robots will result in the loss of more than 20% of jobs; in China, however, a fifth of respondents believe that this will be the case.

The German participants see autonomous robots as a good thing, since their companies are currently having problems finding skilled workers. Overall, just 43% of the survey participants in Germany anticipate that advanced robotics will lead to a reduction in the number of employees in their company. In fact, around 60% of all respondents plan to create new robotics-related jobs, with companies hoping to significantly boost their productivity through use of the technology.

An as yet unpublished study by the German Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) also concludes that robots are not ‘job killers’. Although 1.6 million jobs have been lost in Europe as a result of automation over the past decade, twice as many new jobs have been created.