I came across an article recently when I was in the USA (Wall Street Journal), that asked the same question about America. The reason being that a report
written by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that Southeast Asian nations significantly outperform the rest of the world in wage-controlled robot adoption, while Europe and the United States lag significantly behind. There is a table in the report that puts Australia down the bottom of the list in terms of robots per 10,000 workers, and NZ does not get a mention.
Why does it even matter you might ask? Because investment in robots (which is a proxy for technology) boosts productivity and this is what boosts wages and living standards. Some jobs are replaced by robots (often repetitive, boring and dangerous jobs) but new jobs are created. The report says the payback time when investing in robots is obviously quicker in higher wage economies. For example in Korea, annual compensation in the most recent year was $45,960, and the payback period for installing a robot was 15 months.
The report says that companies that fail to invest in the newest and most efficient production systems lose their competitiveness and risk going out of business. Entire industries can go into blight, and everyone can lose their jobs. Companies that leverage the latest automated production systems may displace some workers, but if they grow and remain competitive, they can often create new opportunities for those displaced workers in other sectors of the business.
In conclusion, if nations want to boost their productivity and competitiveness, one of the most important things they can do is implement policies that spur faster, deeper, and wider adoption of robots—not just in manufacturing, but, as robots get better, in many sectors of the economy. To see how other countries do this, read the article here
