“The robots are coming to take our construction jobs!” There’s been a lot of media coverage over the past couple of years about how workers in many industries, construction included, will soon be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence (AI). A recent study by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute (MEPI) estimates that by 2057 robots could replace or displace 2.7 million jobs in construction.
It’s an alarming number, but one that should be taken in the context of how it was determined. The MEPI study used employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for a handful of construction trades and then applied a growth rate of 6.5% each decade to get projected employment numbers by 2057.
