I've spent a decent amount of time visiting factories in the US and Asia, and despite "how it's made" or other videos showing a ton of automation, so much of manufacturing requires people. Until you're making millions of something or things which are super high value, automation of many assembly steps is often not economically viable. Certain steps are largely automated, like injection molding, or CNC, but so much of grabbing part A and inserting it into part B and adding screws is done by people. Toy manufacture is especially insane as so many little details are painted on by hand.
This. I have spent 30 years in working with a factory in this sort of thing--putting brains into the machines made about a 5-fold improvement in product per worker-hour (and as we added more complex products in that time the actual ratio is higher--I just don't know how much higher) and lowered the skill level required for most workers.
When they hired me it was mostly workers with hand tools. By the time my original employer was destroyed in the housing collapse it was mostly workers acting as material handlers for machines that did the actual work. I'm still in the same industry with some of the same people but now working for what used to be a minor competitor that has grown since the giant died. And note that this is entirely a build-to-order situation, not an assembly line--but it's still the actual work being done mostly by machines that know what they're supposed to build.
