Automation is not an omnipresent, unstoppable force — it occurs in specific places, in response to specific economic and political pressures. Although the global rate of industrial robot installation has more than doubled over the past six years, new robots have mostly arrived in a few regions and industries, both worldwide and within the United States.

In 2021, the United States’ overall density of industrial robots was 274 for every 10,000 manufacturing workers. Yet by 2017, the town of Kokomo, Indiana, already had a robot density of more than 350 per 10,000 workers of any kind, not just workers in manufacturing. This is no freak accident: Kokomo’s top employers are the giants of auto manufacturing, the industry that installed the world’s first industrial robot in 1961 and has led the charge for automation ever since. According to a 2023 report, 77% of US robots are located in the most automated 10% of metro areas, and these metro areas are primarily located in manufacturing-heavy Midwestern states. The bottom 50% of metro areas, by contrast, have almost no robots.

On the international scene, where the top five countries purchase around three-quarters of the world’s robots, the picture at first looks similar — but the global geography has in fact undergone a seismic shift over the past few decades. In 2000, China purchased only 0.4% of industrial robots globally. Today it accounts for a whopping 52% of sales, compared to the United States’ 7%. Between 2017 and 2021 alone, China’s density of industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers rose from 97 to 322, overtaking all but one Western nation. The only countries still ahead of China in robot density are Germany, Japan, Singapore, and, far above the rest, South Korea.