Chart of the Week: The Real Reason America Needs Robots

One of the biggest fears surrounding AI is that it will leave millions of Americans without jobs.

But what if the U.S. is actually facing the opposite problem?

Over the next decade, millions of baby boomers will retire while fewer young people enter the workforce. That could leave American companies scrambling to find enough people to keep their factories, warehouses and construction sites running.

And this week’s chart suggests the shortage has already begun.

America’s Missing Workers

This week’s chart tracks the growing gap between the number of jobs available in American factories and the number of workers being hired to fill them.

The gray line represents monthly manufacturing hires. The blue line represents open manufacturing positions.

For much of the period before the pandemic, those two lines stayed fairly close together.

But the gap has widened considerably.

Manufacturing job openings surged above 800,000 in 2021. They’ve fallen since then, yet they still remain well above the number of workers manufacturers are hiring.

In 2025, roughly 409,000 manufacturing positions remained unfilled. And the problem could get much worse in the near future.

According to research from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, American manufacturers may need as many as 3.8 million new workers by 2033.

But roughly half of those positions could go unfilled. That could increase the number of unfilled manufacturing jobs from roughly 409,000 last year to 1.9 million by 2033.

In other words, the shortage could grow more than 4X in less than a decade.

That’s a major problem at a time when Washington’s push to rebuild American manufacturing is helping drive hundreds of billions of dollars into new factories and infrastructure.

The CHIPS Act helped trigger a wave of investment in American semiconductor factories. Technology companies are constructing enormous data centers. Automakers are building new battery plants, while utilities race to expand the power grid.

All of those projects require people to build, operate and maintain them. But America might not have enough workers available to do it.

Part of the problem is that manufacturing has struggled to attract younger employees. Many of these jobs require specialized training, and companies often say they cannot find applicants with the necessary skills.

But an even larger demographic problem is beginning to take shape.

An average of 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65 every day between 2011 and 2029. In 2025 alone, a record 4.18 million Americans reached that age.

As those older workers retire, fewer young Americans are arriving to replace them.

Steven Ruggles, a professor of history and population studies at the University of Minnesota, believes this could produce something America has never experienced before.

During the 2030s, more people could leave the U.S. workforce than enter it.

In fact, Ruggles estimates the labor force could shrink by 2.7 million workers between 2030 and 2040.

And the shortage won’t be limited to factories.

Construction companies need electricians, welders and HVAC technicians. Utilities need workers to build power plants and transmission lines. And hospitals and nursing homes will need more people to care for an aging population.

That’s where AI and robotics enter the picture.

Industrial robots already weld vehicles, assemble electronics and move products through warehouses. But most of these machines are designed to perform one specific task inside a carefully controlled area.

As I’ve covered in previous issues, the next generation of robots is being built to do much more.

Companies like Tesla, Figure and Agility Robotics are developing humanoid robots that can move through facilities designed for people and perform a much wider range of physical jobs than current robots.

These machines are still expensive, and most are still a long way from matching the flexibility of a human worker.

But they don’t have to replace every worker to make an enormous difference.

Here’s My Take

A robot that handles repetitive lifting can allow a factory to keep operating with fewer employees.

At a GXO warehouse near Atlanta, Agility’s Digit robot has already moved more than 100,000 containers onto conveyor belts, taking over the kind of repetitive physical work that often leads to injuries and high employee turnover.

And in hospitals, robots such as Moxi are already delivering medications, lab samples and supplies, giving nurses more time to do something far more valuable.

Care for their patients.

And as the labor shortage grows, the economics of these machines will become even more attractive.

That’s the real reason robots are coming.

The robot revolution won’t happen because human labor has lost its value. It will happen because human labor has become too valuable to waste.

Regards,

Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing

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