As physical proximity remains a dicey proposition amid the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are stepping up their efforts toward automation, Crain's New York Business reported. For example, a lower Manhattan insurance company recently took on two robot workers (in actuality, software programs) in its claims department, to handle many of the tasks that previously had been done by humans. This is only one of many companies that are turning not to flesh and blood, but wood and wire, to handle their needs—and not just during the pandemic, but beyond. It is estimated that global spending on robotic process automation will increase by about 20 percent next year, to $2 billion. These efforts reflect a time when concerns over people, both workers and customers, getting sick are paramount. Since machines don't get sick (save, perhaps, with computer viruses) those with the capital to spend on them are finding them to be a good solution to disease concerns.

Preliminary research by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve provides evidence for this trend as well. In a recent webinar speech, Philadelphia Fed CEO and President Patrick Harker said, by way of example, that Pennsylvania recently laid off 500 toll booth operators as it switched to automation. Harker said that many of the jobs lost in the pandemic aren't going to come back, as they will have been automated out of existence. He also said that minority workers are more likely than other groups to hold jobs that could be lost, permanently, to automation, meaning that "pandemic-induced automation will, as we have in fact seen, only serve to accentuate preexisting disparities in our society."