Robots and Firms

This seems to be a fairly obvious finding, doesn’t it? Any change in business practices that gives you a competitive advantage gives you, well, a competitive advantage!

The study seems to say: if your company automates jobs away, you’ll actually create jobs in the long run because you’ll be able to take over competitors’ market share! But I don’t think those jobs are of the same type as the ones eliminated - probably trading manual labor for strategy/marketing/engineering, which is not much consolation to current manual workers at your firm.

Also, the study neglects to mention industry-wide effects. Maybe one tech-savvy company can grow its headcount even after automating a bunch of jobs away, but given the heavy headcount losses sustained by competitors, will it still be a net increase in the industry? I would suspect not.