COVID-19 and Implications for Automation

Alex Chernoff and Casey Warman

No 27249, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: COVID-19 may accelerate the automation of jobs, as employers invest in technology to adapt the production process to safeguard against current and potential future pandemics. We identify occupations that have high automation potential and also exhibit a high degree of risk of viral infection. We then examine regional variation in terms of which U.S. local labor markets are most at risk. Next, we outline the differential impact that COVID-19 may have on automatable jobs for different demographic groups. We find that occupations held by U.S. females with mid to low levels of wages and education are at highest risk. Using comparable data for 25 other countries, we find women in this demographic are also at highest risk internationally.

JEL-codes: I10 I14 I24 J15 J16 J23 J24 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Published as Alex Chernoff & Casey Warman, 2023. "COVID-19 and implications for automation," Applied Economics, vol 55(17), pages 1939-1957.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27249.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: COVID-19 and Implications for Automation (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27249

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27249

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().