From Blue- to Steel-Collar Jobs: The Decline in Employment Gaps?

Benjamin Lerch

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2025, vol. 17, issue 1, 126-60

Abstract: I investigate how the introduction of industrial robots is shaping the demographic composition of the US labor force between 1993 and 2014. I find that robots decreased employment of men and women by 3.7 and 1.6 percentage points, contributing to the secular decline in the gender employment gap, and that they decreased employment among Whites and non-Whites by 1.8 and 4.5 percentage points, widening the race/ethnicity employment gap. These effects follow from the persistent occupational segregation in the labor market. Although robots are primarily used in manufacturing, their adverse effects spill over to local service industries, in particular for Blacks and Hispanics.

JEL-codes: E24 J15 J16 L60 O33 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20220051 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E192505V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20220051.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20220051.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:aejmac:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:126-60

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220051

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics is currently edited by Simon Gilchrist

More articles in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().