Factory employment is rising again, according to The Wall Street Journal, but a shift toward high-tech automation is creating roles with greater barriers to entry. Plants adding automation are hiring for different skills than the jobs they replaced.
New aerial images by Measured AI map the full Memphis and Southaven campus: 720 Megapacks between two buildings and 240 more on the east side, a Southaven power plant with 1.24 GW permitted capacity, gas metering, pipeline right-of-way and a valve site, plus 85- and 115-acre expansion sites. The data center story here is a power plant, pipeline and battery story.
A demo shows LimX Dynamics' two-handed humanoid upper body mounted on an industrial robot arm, using power tools and holding a panel beside a worker. The arm handles movement and the hands handle ordinary tools, which could make short runs in prefab shops worth automating. A demo does not prove speed or reliability on a real line.
GXO will put Agility's Digit humanoids into e-commerce sites in Statesville, North Carolina and Lebanon, Tennessee starting in early 2027, after Digit moved more than 100,000 totes at its Flowery Branch, Georgia site. It is a rare humanoid story past the pilot: a 3PL adding sites because the first one paid off.