ABOVE AVERAGE IS OVER:

Employing a human welder in a factory in the U.S. costs about $25 per hour including benefits, according to a 2015 study by the Boston Consulting Group; that drops to just $8 per hour for a robot, including installation, operating costs and maintenance. By 2030, "the operating cost per hour for a robot doing similar welding tasks could plunge to as little as $2 when improvements in performance are factored in," BCG said.

The rise of automation has had tangible financial benefits for the auto industry. Ford's annual revenue per employee, for example, has climbed 27 percent in a decade, although it's slipped a bit from its 2011 peak:

But it's not just factory workers who should be nervous about robots, software and automation. More than half a century after the world's first industrial robot, the Unimate #001, made its debut in a General Motors factory, Martin Ford's "The Rise of the Robots" won the 2015 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.

Ford, a software engineer with more than a quarter-century of experience in computer design, argued that technology threatens to revolutionize all kinds of workplaces, with machines becoming replacements for workers rather than tools for their use:

While lower-skill occupations will no doubt continue to be affected, a great many college-educated, white-collar workers are going to discover that their jobs, too, are squarely in the sights as software automation and predictive algorithms advance rapidly in capability. Employment for many skilled professionals -- including lawyers, journalists, scientists, and pharmacists -- is already being significantly eroded by advancing information technology. They are not alone: most jobs are, on some level, fundamentally routine and predictable.

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