We may have to wait awhile to greet our robot overlords. Or at least the robots that will take our jobs.

As Steve Lohr writes, the McKinsey Global Institute on Thursday released a comprehensive report on the impact of automation and robotics on the global work force. Its conclusion: Many tasks can be handed over to machines, but full replacement of human workers will happen more slowly than many fear.

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The role of automation in displacing workers has been a popular topic since the presidential election. Indeed, it could be easily argued that more blue-collar jobs in the United States have been lost to machines than to foreign workers. A modern steel mill, called a minimill, for example, is mostly automated and needs a fraction of the workers needed at an older mill.