 Robotics technology and firm-level employment adjustment in JapanBin Ni and Ayako Obashi () Japan and the World Economy, 2021, vol. 57, issue C Abstract: Unlike studies that analyze the impact of robotics technology on overall employment at the industry or firm level, this study investigated cross-division employment adjustment within a firm in an industry with greater diffusion and penetration of robotics technology. By examining changes in the composition of employment, we measured job creation and destruction at the division level and explored whether robotics technology, as a leading example of automation, not only displaces workers but also introduces new jobs in favor of labor. We made use of unique, division-level employment data for Japan’s manufacturing firms, together with industry-level data on the installation of industrial robots. We found that industry-level adoption of robots positively affects the firm-level job creation rate and the job destruction rate. Because the magnitude of the impact is larger for job destruction, robot adoption has an overall negative impact on firms’ net employment growth. Our findings suggest that the labor displacement effect of robotics technology and the emergence of new jobs due to technological change coexist even at the firm level. Keywords: Within-firm labor dynamics; Industrial robots; Job creation and destruction (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:japwor:v:57:y:2021:i:c:s0922142521000025 DOI: 10.1016/j.japwor.2021.101054 Access Statistics for this article Japan and the World Economy is currently edited by Robert Dekle and Yasushi Hamao More articles in Japan and the World Economy from Elsevier |
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