Chronic. The use of robots in Japanese retirement homes contributes to improving care for dependent elderly people, but without eliminating care staff jobs, while leading to a deterioration in their status and their remuneration (“Robots and Labor in the Service Sector: Evidence from Nursing Homes »Karen Eggleston, Yong Suk Lee and Toshiaki Iizuka, National Bureau of Economic Research working paper nº 28322, January 2021).
The specific question posed by the three economists – respectively American, Korean and Japanese – refers to a more general question: will robots replace humans and lead to massive job destruction? The debate is lively between economists, who thus revisit the classic question of the impact of technical progress on employment and work.
In the Japanese context, the issue is significantly different since several sectors lack manpower, particularly that of services for the elderly, in a context of a migration policy that is still very restrictive and of the accelerated aging of the population (more than a quarter of the Japanese population is over 65 today), which not only creates new needs for care and services, but also mechanically reduces the labor supply despite the increase in the retirement age . It is estimated that in 2025 there will be a shortage of more than 380,000 care jobs to meet the needs of the elderly.
The presence of robots in Japanese retirement homes is growing today, even if they are concentrated in less than a quarter of establishments. However, most of them are surveillance robots, which allow, for example, to alert in the event of a fall. There are also robots that help with mobility or assist caregivers in lifting patients and, in smaller numbers, “social” robots capable of talking to patients.
Fewer workers on permanent contracts
The three researchers surveyed 900 nursing homes and more than 150,000 workers during the year 2017. They find that there has been no reduction in the number of nursing staff jobs due to the deployment of robots. However, two other results deserve attention.
First of all, if the total number of jobs remains stable, that of temporary and part-time workers increases while that of workers on permanent contracts decreases, a sign of job flexibilization.
You have 38.53% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.