There are 9 million people, mostly young women, dependent upon jobs in textiles, garments, and footwear within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) economic area, which includes Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. These are the workers the ILO identifies as most susceptible to losing their jobs to the new robot workforce.
Sewbots are unlikely to appear in factories in Asia, the report says, but will be installed in destination markets like Europe and the U.S. It is such a big threat that the ILO urges Asean countries to start planning to diversify to “avoid considerable setbacks in development”.
