Job openings are the robotics trade's leading indicator

In a webcast reported by ETF Trends, Morten Paulsen, CLSA Japan's research head, framed the 481,000 open jobs U.S. manufacturers posted in June as next year's robot installations, pointing to a 94% R-squared correlation between manufacturing job openings and robot installations one year later. That makes the labor shortage a leading indicator for the automation trade more dependable than factory output or policy mandates.

The vacancy count carries weight because U.S. manufacturing accounts for 17% of world manufacturing value added, more than Japan, Germany, Korea, Italy, and France combined, and its roughly 30 million workers each generate more than $220,000 in value added, over ten times the equivalent figure in China, Paulsen said. Yet recruiting and retention have ranked as manufacturers' number one concern for five consecutive years, above inflation and tariffs. The workforce skews old, with 26% aged 55 or older and only 8% in the 16-to-24 bracket versus roughly 13% in other sectors, while stricter immigration rules are expected to tighten the pool further.

That relationship translates into a forecast of robot shipments to the U.S. climbing from roughly 45,000 to 46,000 units in 2025 to about 120,000 by 2030, and Paulsen projects the U.S. will become the second country in the world to deploy more than one million industrial robots by 2033. The upcycle already has momentum: the 2026 manufacturing PMI run rate stands closer to 53 against a 49 average in 2025. Global factory automation companies' top-line growth accelerated from 14% in the first quarter to 24% in the second, with operating profit growth jumping from 33% to 56% year over year.

Paulsen separates physical AI (AI applied to the physical world through robotics) from humanoid robotics, which gets the media attention but faces the slower U.S. path. Humanoid adoption is held back by the absence of an ISO safety certification framework, a barrier less constraining in China, while the measurable demand is for conventional industrial robots. The correlation converts the labor shortage into a timing tool for index investors: if the relationship holds, June's openings are already booked as installations roughly a year out, turning automation exposure from a thematic bet into something closer to a quantified cycle.

Paulsen makes the case as strategic advisor for VettaFi's ROBO Global Indexes, the benchmarks behind the ROBO Global Artificial Intelligence ETF (THNQ). The evidence he cites arrives monthly, in the job-openings data, before the robots do.