A recent report shared that in Japan, the number of active service robots could rise by 300% over the next five years. A restaurant chain called Skylark already employs 3,000 “cat character” robots that physically serve its customers. The idea of the number of robots tripling there comes from a variety of concerning factors spelled out below. And while the U.S. leads in terms of the number of companies building and delivering service robots, it’s been slower with adopting them into customer-facing operations.

Researchers at the Recruit Works Institute say Japan will grapple with a terrible labor shortage by 2040

Within the next 15 years, experts warn that Japan could have a labor shortage of around 11 million unfilled service roles. Another institute backed by the Japanese government predicts that by 2065, 40% of the country’s population will be 65 years or older, TechCrunch shared.

With an aging population and seemingly no one to fill new or open roles, service robots are helping bridge the gap. In 2023, over 200,000 service robots entered the global workforce, with most starting their jobs in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the meantime, though, the U.S. faces similar obstacles to Japan 

As of October 2024, the International Federation of Robotics reported that 199 companies manufacturing service and medical robots call the U.S. home. Surprisingly, while this is the largest number of these robotics companies in a single country, only 4.3% of 2023 robot sales in the same category were actually made in the Americas. Keep in mind this is all of the Americas as a whole territory…meaning Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and South America combined.

Stateside, while Americans grumble about giving their Wendy’s drive-thru order to a glitchy AI bot, we also witness labor shortages across the service industry daily.

It seems Americans aren’t super interested in interacting with robots, yet we don’t want our kids to fill these roles, either. The gaps extend from medical aid jobs and low-level administrative positions to hospitality staff and even trades, like car repair. Culturally, we want out of minimum wage positions…but remove immigrants from these jobs in the name of “giving them back to Americans.”

Speaking of cultural hesitancies, there’s also a large group of aging Americans who don’t see themselves ever living outside their single-family homes, let alone stopping driving.

After all, Americans don’t tend to prefer cohabitating with multiple generations of family. And while many hoping to remain in their houses until their last breath just won’t be able to due to a variety of factors, even if they could swing it, there’s a clear lack of in-home geriatric caretakers to help them live independently anyway.

In any case, service robots can help fill these labor shortages

Service robots don’t get tired or sick. They don’t call off for the litany of reasons humans need time away from the job. Once we hit a certain level of advancement, they’ll be capable of taking and serving our food orders with fewer errors than humans. In fact, they’ll be able to perform countless tasks without issue, including diagnosing and repairing things, cleaning, cooking, and much more.

This is positive news for aging Americans who want to stay home “forever,” too. Service robots might be able to help the elderly with at-home care, preventing them from entering a nursing home. Alternatively, nursing homes might install caregiving robots to maintain operational ability despite a lack of viable human headcount on staff.

It might be some time before we’re comfortable with robots, but we’re already well on our way to accepting similar technology. It just doesn’t have a face, arms, or legs.

While we still have a ways to go with, say, Tesla’s Self-driving mode, many motorists can hardly wait until they can stop paying attention to the road completely. Many already do, and unfortunately, pay for it with a preventable collision. But that’s a whole different conversation.

Heck, if we had a robot to do our domestic tasks for a single up-front cost and general software updates and maintenance after…I can certainly imagine them becoming a regular household object here. Lots of people already have robot vacuums.

It’s not that we should dive head-first into service robot adoption and figure on an “every man for himself” scramble. It’s just that many jobs aren’t all that great for people, anyway. Let’s shift the mentality that people need a J-O-B because they need “something to do that pays,” and think about what people are best doing. Leave the crappy jobs to the robots.

Otherwise, without this tech, the whole “It takes a village” motto will need to become more of a core, universal reality here since many of us can’t actually afford to fill low-income jobs. College, housing, healthcare, and daycare are all just too damn expensive for us to work the Wendy’s drive-thru.

One thing’s for sure: I’ll be letting my kids know about service robotics as a career choice.