AMERICAN workers are hoping that the tight pandemic labor market will translate into better pay. It might just mean robots take their jobs instead.

Labor shortages and rising wages are pushing U.S. business to invest in automation. A recent U.S. Federal Reserve survey of chief financial officers found that at firms with difficulty hiring, one third are implementing or exploring automation to replace workers. In earnings calls over the past month, executives from a range of businesses confirmed the trend.

Domino’s Pizza Inc. is “putting in place equipment and technology that reduce the amount of labor that is required to produce our dough balls,” said CEO Ritch Allison.

Mark Coffey, a group vice president at Hormel Foods Corp., said the maker of Spam spread and Skippy peanut butter is “ramping up our investments in automation” because of the “tight labor supply.”

The mechanizing of mundane tasks has been underway for generations. It’s made remarkable progress in the past decade: The number of industrial robots installed in the world’s factories more than doubled in that time, to about 3 million. Automation has been spreading into service businesses too.

The United States has lagged behind other economies, especially Asian ones, but the pandemic might trigger some catching up. With some 10.4 million open positions as of August, and record numbers of Americans quitting their jobs, the difficulty of finding staff is adding new incentives.

Ametek Inc. makes automation equipment for industrial firms, like motion trackers that are used from steel and lumber mills to packaging systems. CEO David A. Zapico said that part of the company is “firing on all cylinders.” That’s because “people want to remove labor from the processes,” he said on an earnings call. “In some places, you can’t hire labor.”

Unions have long seen automation as a threat. At U.S. ports, which lag their global peers in technology and are currently at the center of a major supply-chain crisis, the International Longshoremen’s Association has vowed to fight it.(SD-Agencies)