Breaking News
These robots are coming for the jobs no one wants — and could fill workforce gaps
Agility Robotics is deploying humanoid robots at Toyota’s Canada manufacturing plant.
The company says its robot, Digit, will take on jobs involving highly repetitive tasks.
Agility’s chief business officer, Daniel Diez, said companies see labor gaps in these positions.
Backflipping robots make for splashy demos and viral videos, but Agility Robotics sees humanoid bots doing something simpler — solving an urgent global labor issue inside manufacturing plants.
The Oregon-based startup has so far deployed its humanoid robot, Digit, at Amazon, Schaeffler Group, and GXO, a logistics company. The startup announced in February that a few Digit robots would be deployed in Toyota’s massive manufacturing plant in Canada, marking yet another automaker betting on bipedal bots.
Daniel Diez, Agility’s chief business officer, told Business Insider that there’s a common thread at the companies he visits around the world. In Germany, Korea, Japan, or the US, manufacturers just don’t have enough people who want to work mundane, repetitive jobs.
“It’s the same exact issue: Labor gaps in these highly repetitive physical tasks,” Diez said. “They simply can’t find the people to do this work.”
There is no shortage of manufacturing roles. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 400,000 job openings in the sector in the US as of December 2025.
In addition to vacancies, talent retention remains a top concern for manufacturers, according to a 2024 survey of more than 200 companies conducted by The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte.
Diez said there are “compounding effects” to the so-called labor gap.
A significant share of the manufacturing workforce is 55 and over, he said, meaning they’re approaching retirement. BLS’s Current Population Survey clocks the number at a little over 25%.
Add to that the Trump Administration’s push to bring onshore manufacturing back, which Diez said will only create more jobs and a greater need for automation.
“This re-shoring of manufacturing in the US is going to only occur through a combination of human employment and automation technology, like humans and robotics,” he said.
Automakers are notably bracing for this shifting tide. Tesla, Volkswagen, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, and Hyundai, among others, have made significant investments in humanoid robots with the prospect that they’ll work the assembly lines in the near future.
Boston Dynamics in January unveiled a new iteration of Atlas, an all-electric humanoid, that the startup aims to deploy in Hyundai’s Georgia factory in a few years.
