Thomas Black, Columnist

Robots Are Key to Winning the Productivity War

While machines do replace specific jobs, their adoption boosts salaries and raises living standards.

August 19, 2022 at 11:00 AM UTC

Thomas Black is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the industrial and transportation sectors. He was previously a Bloomberg News reporter covering logistics, manufacturing and private aviation.

Robots can handle some of the more tedious jobs.
Photographer: Grant Hindsley/AFP/Getty Images

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For those who believe that the surge of interest in warehouse automation and robotics was just a pandemic fling that will fade as the labor market loosens, meet Malcolm Wilson.

He’s the chief executive officer of GXO Logistics Inc., which operates about 900 warehouses, mostly in the US and Europe for customers including Nike Inc. and Nestle SA. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based company, which cobbles together different types of robots tailored to a client’s needs, signed up a record $475 million of new business in the second quarter and has a pipeline of automated logistics projects that extend into 2024.