The rise of robots and the fall of routine jobs

Gaaitzen de Vries, Elisabetta Gentile, Sébastien Miroudot and Konstantin Wacker

Labour Economics, 2020, vol. 66, issue C

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on jobs. We combine data on robot adoption and occupations by industry in thirty-seven countries for the period from 2005 to 2015. We exploit differences across industries in technical feasibility – defined as the industry's share of tasks replaceable by robots – to identify the impact of robot usage on employment. The data allow us to differentiate effects by the routine-intensity of employment. We find that a rise in robot adoption relates significantly to a fall in the employment share of routine manual task-intensive jobs. This relation is observed in high-income countries, but not in emerging market and transition economies.

Keywords: Robots; Tasks; Occupations; Eployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E23 J23 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (92)

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Working Paper: The Rise of Robots and the Fall of Routine Jobs (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:66:y:2020:i:c:s0927537120300890

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101885

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