Fact-check: The article accurately describes a legitimate NBER working paper (w34895) titled 'Minimum Wages and Rise of the Robots' by the specified authors, published in March 2026, using data from 1992–2021 to find that a 10% minimum wage increase boosts robot adoption by about 8% in manufacturing. The paper is confirmed on NBER.org, SSRN, and ResearchGate, with promotion by co-author Erik Brynjolfsson on LinkedIn; no real-time contradictions found on X or elsewhere despite recent publication.
Minimum Wages and Rise of the Robots -- by Erik Brynjolfsson, J. Frank Li, Javier Miranda, Robert Seamans, Andrew J. Wang
A new academic paper by economists including Erik Brynjolfsson examines the relationship between minimum wage policy and firms' adoption of automation technologies. Using state-level robot exposure data and plant-level industrial robot import data linked to U.S. Census microdata from 1992–2021, the study finds that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage raises robot adoption in manufacturing by roughly 8 percent relative to the mean. The research uses state border discontinuities as a natural