Robot Density in Russia

Not long ago I had occasion to consider Russia's manufacturing base relative to that of the West--and concluded that while the country is important as a producer of certain commodities, and has real strengths in some exacting areas, as a whole its manufacturing output looks like that of a developing country on the Mexico-Turkey level, and fairly unevenly at that, in part as a result of its unique history (with areas of world-caliber consequences offset by areas of extreme weakness).

While my conclusion was initially based on per capita manufacturing output, and on Russia's production and consumption of steel, machine tools and semiconductors (and I might add, on the contrast between Russia's status in aerospace and Russia's status in information technology), I have more recently had occasion to think about the installation of industrial robots--and in particular about "robot density"--as a useful metric in this area.

As it happened, when surveying the data (mainly with Britain in mind) I noticed that Russia is not even listed among the major users--who tended to at least be in the area of 200 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2021 (with the U.S. closing on 300, and China past that mark), with the most highly industrialized states in cases having much more, especially to the extent that they have robust, high-capital, high-productivity, high-tech sectors like autos and electronics (Germany and Japan both having about 400, and South Korea 1,000, per 10,000 workers).

Looking elsewhere for a Russian figure I did not find one for 2021, but I did find one for 2019.

The figure was six. Six robots per ten thousand workers.

Assuming Russian industry sustained the growth rate seen in the prior two years (it was four in 2017, translating to a 23 percent a year growth rate--proportionally rather faster than China in the same period), this would have worked out to no more than ten robots in 2021. Had it added as many new units per worker as China, it would have still been in the 30-40 range.

Going by this figure (which is probably wildly overoptimistic; even the 10-robots-per-10,000 workers may be overoptimistic for all I know, given the obstacles to the country's investment in the technology) Russia's robot density would still have been not only a very small fraction that of the U.S. or China, let alone that of a Korea, but well below the average for the planet as a whole (the global mean about 141 robots per worker in 2021), far behind even the weakest of the major industrialized powers (Britain having not much more than 100 robots per 10,000 workers at last count), and only where Mexico is (somewhere around forty robots per 10,000 workers). The result is that this, too, seems to support the reading of Russia's economy as still well behind that of the advanced industrialized countries, especially in these critical areas.