Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Foxconn Automation Reducing Employment

Around 2016 there was large interest in how factory automation was going to lead to mass unemployment. And this was one of the reasons given for why Universal Basic Income would be introduced.

But have the predictions of then happened? Foxconn was one of the big companies in the news about this at the time.


iPhone manufacturer Foxconn plans to replace almost every human worker with robots

Foxconn had 837000 workers in 2016 30% less now would be 587,000 employees. Instead Foxconn in 2020 employed around 1.29 million people.
There could be more going on here. Mergers could increase the size of the company. But on the raw figure nothing like the 30% reduction in staff happened. 

No comments: