Computerization of White Collar Jobs

Marcus Dillender and Eliza Forsythe

No 29866, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We investigate the impact of computerization of white-collar jobs on wages and employment. Using online job postings from 2007 and 2010--2016 for office and administrative support (OAS) jobs, we show that when firms adopt new software at the job-title level they increase the skills required of job applicants. Furthermore, firms change the task content of such jobs, broadening them to include tasks associated with higher-skill office functions. We aggregate these patterns to the local labor-market level, instrumenting for local technology adoption with national measures. We find that a 1 standard deviation increase in OAS technology usage reduces employment in OAS occupations by about 1 percentage point and increases wages for college graduates in OAS jobs by over 3 percent. We find negative wage spillovers, with wages falling for both workers with and without a college degree. These results are consistent with technological adoption inducing a realignment in task assignment across occupations, leading office support occupations to become higher skill. We argue relative wage gains for OAS workers indicates that factor-augmenting features of OAS technological change dominate task-substituting features. In addition, while we find that total employment increases, these gains primarily accrue to college-educated women.

JEL-codes: J23 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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