Industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers — IFR World Robotics
Robot density is the number of operational industrial robots per 10,000 people employed in manufacturing. It is the standard measure of automation maturity because it normalises for the size of a country's manufacturing base — a large country with many robots is not necessarily more automated than a small one with fewer.
Source & coverage: Figures are the latest published International Federation of Robotics (IFR) World Robotics data, sourced via Our World in Data and re-fetched automatically. IFR tracks roughly 21 national markets; countries outside that set are shown as clearly-flagged estimates. Currently showing IFR World Robotics (via Our World in Data). Ranking covers 53 countries.
| Rank | Country | Robots / 10k Workers |
|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | South Korea | 1220 |
| 🥈 | Singapore | 818 |
| 🥉 | Germany | 449 |
| 4 | Japan | 446 |
| 5 | Sweden | 377 |
| 6 | Denmark | 329 |
| 7 | USA | 307 |
| 8 | Taiwan | 302 |
| 9 | Norway | 298 |
| 10 | Switzerland | 294 |
| 11 | Netherlands | 293 |
| 12 | Belgium | 289 |
| 13 | Austria | 272 |
| 14 | Canada | 241 |
| 15 | Italy | 237 |
| 16 | Czech Republic | 216 |
| 17 | Slovakia | 210 |
| 18 | Australia | 197 |
| 19 | France | 195 |
| 20 | Finland | 183 |
| 21 | Spain | 183 |
| 22 | Hungary | 172 |
| 23 | China | 166 |
| 24 | UK | 143 |
| 25 | UAE | 142 |
| 26 | Ireland | 138 |
| 27 | Israel | 131 |
| 28 | New Zealand | 112 |
| 29 | Poland | 102 |
| 30 | Thailand | 98 |
| 31 | Portugal | 89 |
| 32 | Malaysia | 74 |
| 33 | Saudi Arabia | 68 |
| 34 | India | 67 |
| 35 | Romania | 58 |
| 36 | Turkey | 52 |
| 37 | Greece | 44 |
| 38 | Mexico | 42 |
| 39 | Vietnam | 38 |
| 40 | Ukraine | 24 |
| 41 | Brazil | 24 |
| 42 | Chile | 22 |
| 43 | Argentina | 18 |
| 44 | South Africa | 12 |
| 45 | Colombia | 9 |
| 46 | Russia | 8 |
| 47 | Egypt | 8 |
| 48 | Indonesia | 7 |
| 49 | Philippines | 6 |
| 50 | Pakistan | 3 |
| 51 | Kenya | 3 |
| 52 | Nigeria | 3 |
| 53 | Ethiopia | 1 |
Year-over-year change in measured robot density between IFR's two most recent reporting years. Only countries with two consecutive years of measured IFR data are included — estimates are excluded.
South Korea, by a wide margin — driven by Samsung and Hyundai's electronics and automotive plants. Singapore is second, with a small manufacturing workforce and highly automated electronics output.
IFR's most recently published global average is 162 robots per 10,000 employees. Anything above that puts a country in the upper half of world manufacturing automation; the leading economies sit several times higher.
China's manufacturing-employment denominator is disputed and has been revised. We publish the IFR/Our World in Data series for consistency across every country; IFR press releases have cited a materially higher figure for China using a different employment base.
Full details of how every metric is sourced and calculated are on our methodology page.