[rmason]

By agreeing to cut starting assembly line workers wages in half the UAW has unknowingly extended its life time. Eventually all factories will use these robots for the majority of assembly.

But if humans are removed from assembly the reason to keep manufacturing outside the US for cheap labor disappears. A combination of freight costs and supply chain distributions will put it at a decided disadvantage.

So manufacturing will return to America though there will be fewer jobs there will be increased demand for engineers.

[angstrom]

Agree that it's likely the endgame for human manufacturing in most cases. Humans will probably remain in specialized niche cases, but they'll be where either human dexterity or flexibility is still faster/cheaper than deploying robots.

Eventually humans won't be manufacturing. As the Chinese/Indian/etc standard of living increases they'll also be using robots like this. Specialization continues its upward trend. Cities will thrive or fail based on what they are able to specialize in.

Social nets, declining population, and possibly new economic models will have to step in where manual labor was previously able to fill the employment gap.

[michaelheinrich]

Interesting points raised. I see robots overtaking most manufacturing eventually as well as they have a much lower margin of error, never need to sleep (with the occasional maintenance), are more precise and can perform repetitive tasks more quickly. I see human jobs moving more into the management of systems / engineering aspects. Unless one is dealing with luxury goods (e.g., high end watches) where I think value will still be placed on a human operator.

[diegob]

what about handmade crafts? there will still (always?) be a market for high-quality goods made by a person, even if machine made goods are of the same quality.