ABSTRACT
The Covid 19 pandemic represents an exogenous shock to the capitalist economy, which has been evolving in the direction of enhanced automation and, in recent times, robotization. The pandemic has given an impetus to large-scale robotization as avoidance of disruption of production processes in these times very often necessarily involves physical distancing of human labour, an endeavour associated with the replacement of human–human contact with human–robot contact. Such large-scale robotization is often avoided by firms in normal times, given that mass displacement of labour ruins the morale of those who remain employed with these firms and also because of the enormous investment that it entails.
However, such robotization is mainly irreversible as robots, once bought, will continue to provide human labour substituting services for a long period of time at minimal cost. Thus, the dip in requirement for human labour per unit of output brought about by the pandemic is permanent. Some positive tendencies would be generated in regard to human employment in the post-Covid future: an increase in the scale of output driven by cost reductions associated with robotization, which would generate an upward push to the amount of labour employed in production, transportation, and warehousing and counteract the depressing effect of lower labour intensity of output.
Unemployment caused by robotization induced by the pandemic can lead to significant pain as well as depressed demand, with the latter again having a negative impact on the number of jobs. The negative synergy would need to be tackled through government intervention in the form of a minimum income plan for the unemployed and the reskilling of those rendered unemployed so that they become suitable for the jobs that are on offer.
