Equalising the effects of automation? The role of task overlap for job finding

Diego Dabed, Sabrina Genz and Emilie Rademakers

Labour Economics, 2025, vol. 96, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates whether task overlap can equalise the distributional effects of automation for unemployed job seekers displaced from routine jobs. Using a language model, we establish a novel job-to-job task similarity measure. Exploiting the resulting job network to define job markets flexibly, we find that only the most similar jobs affect job finding. Since automation-exposed jobs overlap with other highly exposed jobs, task-based reallocation provides little relief for affected job seekers. We show that this is not true for more recent software exposure, for which task overlap lowers the inequality in job finding.

Keywords: Automation; Unemployment; Occupational reallocation; Task overlap; Job network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J24 J62 J64 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:96:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000909

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102766

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