This photo provided by HD Hyundai Co. shows its industrial robots at a factory.
SEOUL, Feb. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — The increasing adoption of industrial robots centered on labor-intensive and dangerous work could reduce the share of human workers in the overall workforce, thus lowering the number of workers injured by occupational accidents, a central bank report said Monday.
Kim Hye-jin, an economist at the Bank of Korea (BOK), analyzed the impact of expanding the number of industrial robots on the safety and health of workers on the basis of the 2010-2019 statistics of the Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service.
Regression analysis showed that the number of injured workers decreased by 8 percent per 100 workers when the number of robots per 1,000 workers increased by 1 standard deviation (9.95 units) during the period.
In particular, this effect was most prominent when it came to the number of workers receiving disability benefits, which declined by 16.9 percent during this period.
During the 2010-2019 period, the increase in the number of robots reduced the number of workers injured by occupational accidents by 41,245, creating the effect of lowering compensation costs by 573.8 billion won (US$435 million).
The report noted that the decrease in the number of injured workers was attributable to the increase in the number of robots performing labor-intensive and dangerous tasks and the decrease in the share of workers engaged in physical work among the total workforce.
The report stressed that a statistically significant effect was found particularly among workers with lower education attainment (less than high school education) working in environments that were ideal for the implementation of industrial robots.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
