By Timothy Aeppel

(Reuters) – More robotics workers joined the U.S. workforce in 2013 than ever. They performed tasks ranging from picking up cans and bottles at garbage recycling plants to putting smaller consumer goods into boxes at ecommerce warehouses.

In 2022, it looks like there will be more robots.

North America’s companies have spent over $2 billion to buy nearly 40,000 robots by 2021. They did this in order to cope with record-breaking demand and a labor shortage caused by the pandemic. The number of robots in use grew beyond the auto industry’s historic boom.

“With human labor, what they produce depends on if they’re hungry or are they tired or have they had their coffee,” said Brian Tu, chief revenue officer for DCL Logistics in Fremont, California, which started installing robots on e-commerce fulfillment lines during the pandemic. Robots work quickly and don’t need breaks.

According to A3 data, factories and industrial users purchased 39,708 robotics in 2021. This is 28% more than 2020. An earlier record was established in 2017, when North American firms ordered 34,904 robots worth $1.9 billion.

Since 2016, nearly twice the number of robots sold to automakers than to any other sector combined. The share of advanced robots that went to businesses other than automakers grew in 2020.

According to A3.org, metals and the food and consumer goods sectors are the most popular for robot orders growth.

Another sector that is experiencing rapid growth is e-commerce. DCL has five fulfillment centers in the U.S. and plans to open another one soon. According to Tu, lines with robots are able operate with less people, yet can produce 200% more.

“We have workers still working around the robots,” said he, but “we can reduce labor roughly by half.”

(Graphic: Unemployed to job openings More jobs than jobseekers: https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-FED/JOBS/egvbkmeoepq/chart.png)

BRING THE COBOTS

This data is mostly used to track orders for large industrial robots. These systems are often large and replace entire sections on an assembly line with their moving arms. However, a rising number of robots include a new type of “cobots”, which are designed to be used alongside humans in assembly lines.

Joe Campbell is a senior manager in applications development for Universal Robots. Universal Robots is a Massachusetts-based unit of Teradyne Inc that specializes in cobots. But the pandemic alone is not driving this change. Universally, it is estimated that 2,000 Baby Boomers retire each day from manufacturing jobs. This is threatening veteran knowledge on factory floors.

Campbell stated that cobots have entered many sectors which had long been resistant to automation. The company, which has sold its robot arms to a construction firm, used the robotics to install large-scale drywall projects. It is notoriously labour-intensive.

Also, cobots can be used by auto plants. The new Fiat 500 electric car is being produced by Stellantis N.V. in Holland. Campbell explained that the arms attach to a frame which moves above and below the vehicle, where they find and fix nuts.

Auto plants used robots in jobs such as welding metal for many decades. However, this is a new technology for cobots.

Elon Musk, Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:) Inc CEO, stated last week that his engineers will launch an autonomous robot named Optimus at its plants next year. Musk suggested that robots may be used in the immediate future to transport items and address labor shortages.

U.S. employers still had 10.9million vacant jobs as of December. That’s nominally less than the previous record 11.1million in 2021. Unemployment is at an all-time high of 1.7 jobs per unemployed worker. At least one Federal Reserve policymaker, James Bullard (St. Louis Fed President) sees U.S. unemployment dropping to 3% for the first year since 1950.

Universal Robots’ Campbell stated, “Never Say Never,” “But I don’t see anything that would slow us down.”