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Put aside for a moment how moving jobs back to a country with high costs gives companies an incentive to automate. There's a bigger problem: After displacing U.S. manufacturing workers, robots are poised to do the same in developing economies, too. It will be hard to re-shore jobs that no longer exist. 

It took 50 years for the world to install the first million industrial robots. The next million will take only eight, according to Macquarie. Importantly, much of the recent growth happened outside the U.S., in particular in China, which has an aging population and where wages have risen. [...]

German robot maker Kuka AG, acquired last year by China's Midea Group Co., estimates a typical industrial robot costs about 5 euros ($5.28) an hour. Manufacturers spend 50 euros an hour to employ someone in Germany and about 10 euros an hour in China. That's brought forward the point at which companies can recoup their outlay on automation equipment: the payback period for an automotive welding robot in China has fallen to less than two years, according to Macquarie. 

Rather than seek out an even cheaper source of labor elsewhere -- in another emerging Asian economy, say -- Chinese manufacturers are choosing to install more robots, especially for more complex tasks. As Bernstein analysts recently put it, China isn't getting rid of the work, just the workers. 

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