For all of his faults as a president, Donald Trump presided over one of the strongest periods of economic growth in modern history during the first three and a half years of his presidency.
When his predecessor, Barack Obama, transferred power to Trump in January 2017, the unemployment rate hovered at a healthy 4.7%.
By the end of 2019, the unemployment rate was down to a miniscule 3.5%, well below Federal Reserve expectations of 4.5%.
The unemployment rate for Black people in America fell below 6% for the first time since record-keeping began in 1972 and the poverty rate for Black Americans dropped below 20% for the first time since World War II.
Then March 2020 came and the coronavirus pandemic changed the United States, and the world, forever.
By April 2020, the total jobless rate jumped to nearly 15%, with the Federal Reserve Economic Data chart showing the economy losing more than 22 million nonfarm payroll jobs between February and April.
By September, the Black unemployment rate was 12.1% and the jobless rate for high-school graduates with no college was 9%.
While it has been two years since the world was in the depths of the pandemic recession, the road back to normal hasn't been linear.
And now in 2022, economists are less concerned about unemployment and more concerned with a labor shortage as newly freed workers have taken their time jumping back into the labor market.
Big Business Fighting Big Labor Shortages
The tight labor market has been blamed on everything from too much government assistance to low pay.
While the origin of the labor shift is still in question, the concern about it on Wall Street is real.
Companies mentioning labor shortages on their earnings calls jumped to 535 in August 2021, according to data from AlphaSense and Axios.
And while concern, as measured by earnings call mentions, has fallen since then, there are signs that companies are being proactive about never being put in a labor shortage position again.
Robot sales hit a record high in the first quarter of 2022 as North American companies purchased the most robots ever in a single quarter, according to industry statistics released by the Association for Advancing Automation (A3).
Robot sales increased 28% year over year to 11,595 from 9,098. Revenue from those sales jumped to $646 million from $466 million.
The automotive industry has historically been one of the greatest adopters of robotic technology, but non-automotive robot sales have been outpacing automotive robot sales since 2020.
"Every industry, including agriculture, construction, retail and hospitality, is now looking at how they can take advantage of robotics to make their companies more successful," A3 Vice President Alex Shikany said, according to the Robot Report.
"These companies recognize what we at A3 have long believed, that robots can not only take over the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs that are so hard to fill, but they can save and create jobs as automation helps them grow their business.”
While industries that have traditionally relied on robotics, like metals, plastics and rubber, and electronics each saw more than a 20% increase (metals saw a 40% increase), food and consumer goods companies showed a 14% increase.
Big Retailers Turning to Automation
During a recent earnings call, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky admitted Amazon had a labor problem.
"The early wave disruption was handling volume without the capacity to handle it and then quickly playing catch-up. And as that was starting to improve, labor took a turn in the United States, especially labor availability, and we've really had to scramble to add workers," Olsavsky said.
Amazon currently employs about 1.1 million people in the United States. That headcount is augmented by the 200,000 robots the company has working, according to Automation World.
In 2012, Amazon acquired robot-coordinated order fulfillment company Kiva Systems for $775 million in cash.
Amazon Australia opened the largest warehouse ever built on the continent. The 200,000 square-meter facility is the size of 24 rugby fields.
But its size isn't the only thing interesting about the facility. It is also the first "robotics fulfillment center" in the southern hemisphere.
Robots will team with 1,500 workers to house and move around 20 million items. For comparison sake, JFK8 is about 80,000 square meters with a human head count above 8,000 workers.
Robotics will only become a larger part of the Amazon ecosystem, and the shipping industry in general.
The Warehouse Robotics Market was valued at $9.88 billion in 2021, according to Mordor Intelligence, but it is expected to jump to $23.09 billion by 2027 with a compound annual growth rate of 15.33%.
According to Bank of America, it is estimated that by 2025, 45% of all manufacturing tasks will be executed by robotic technology.
To put that number in perspective, According to DHL, 80% of warehouses are still manually operated with no supporting automation.
"Forecast of long-term labor shortages across the United States and Europe, as well as sustained pressure on supply chains to deliver orders quicker and more precisely, has caused operations executives to seriously assess that question as they look for answers to staffing challenges," Mordor Intelligence said in a recent report.
