A major concern in the current public discussion is rapidly accelerating automation and in particular the use of robots. Many experts and researchers see it as a driver of employment losses hitting in particular so called routine jobs. The present study challenges this perspective. It examines two central questions: First, what approaches to automation and digitalization have been pursued in the automotive industry in Germany, Japan, and the United States? Second, how have employment and its occupational composition in the automotive industry developed in the three countries? The first part of the study focuses on the evolution of automation and digitalization approaches in the automotive industry from the early 1990s until today. It combines a qualitative analysis of press articles and a quantitative evaluation of the development of the stock of industrial robots from 1993 to 2018 based on the statistics of the International Federation of Robotics. The second part of the study focuses on the change in employment structures using occupational statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (US), the Federal Employment Agency (Germany), and the Statistics Bureau of Japan. The results of the study question the perception of an automation-related threat to employment and especially to production employment. At the same time, they highlight differences between automation and digitalization approaches in Germany, Japan, and the United States as well as different paths of change in employment structures.

中文翻译：

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德国、日本和美国汽车行业的自动化、数字化和职业结构的变化：从 1990 年代初到 2018 年的简史

当前公众讨论的一个主要问题是快速加速自动化，特别是机器人的使用。许多专家和研究人员将其视为就业损失的驱动因素，尤其是所谓的常规工作。本研究对这一观点提出了挑战。它探讨了两个核心问题：首先，德国、日本和美国的汽车行业采用了哪些自动化和数字化方法？第二，这三个国家汽车行业的就业及其职业构成如何发展？该研究的第一部分侧重于汽车行业从 1990 年代初到今天的自动化和数字化方法的演变。它结合了对新闻文章的定性分析和基于国际机器人联合会统计的 1993 年至 2018 年工业机器人存量发展的定量评估。研究的第二部分侧重于使用劳工统计局（美国）、联邦就业局（德国）和日本统计局的职业统计数据来研究就业结构的变化。研究结果质疑自动化相关威胁对就业，尤其是对生产就业的看法。同时，他们强调了德国、日本和美国的自动化和数字化方法之间的差异，以及就业结构变化的不同路径。