Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor Market Adjusted to Mechanizing Telephone Operation

James Feigenbaum and Daniel Gross

No 28061, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In the early 1900s, telephone operation was among the most common jobs for American women, and telephone operators were ubiquitous. Between 1920 and 1940, AT&T undertook one of the largest automation investments in modern history, replacing operators with mechanical switching technology in over half of the U.S. telephone network. Using variation across U.S. cities in the timing of adoption, we study how this wave of automation affected the labor market for young women. Although automation eliminated most of these jobs, it did not reduce future cohorts' overall employment: the decline in operators was counteracted by employment growth in middle-skill clerical jobs and lower- skill service jobs, including in new categories of work. Using a new genealogy-based census-linking method, we show that incumbent telephone operators were most impacted, and a decade later more likely to be in lower-paying occupations or no longer working.

JEL-codes: J21 J24 J62 J63 M51 M54 N32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-lma and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as James Feigenbaum & Daniel P Gross, 2024. "Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor Market Adjusted to Mechanizing Telephone Operation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol 139(3), pages 1879-1939.

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