EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Training Time, Robots and Technological Unemployment

Fenicia Cossu, Alessio Moro and Michelle Rendall

No 19343, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We show that labor training requirements for high-skilled occupations increased in the U.S. from 2006 to 2019. These greater training requirements reduce the extent to which workers displaced from shrinking occupations can relocate to expanding (high-skilled) occupations, thus affecting both the equilibrium occupational structure and the unemployment level. We build a quantitative model in which labor is displaced by task-replacing technological change embodied in robots (“tasks shock†) and the extent of occupational switching depends on the destination occupations' training requirements. We find that: (i) task-displacing technological change increases steady-state unemployment, but it reduces unemployment along the transition; (ii) in contrast, a comparable shock to capital embodied technological change produces larger unemployment rates with respect to the tasks shock, both in the transition and the steady state; and (iii) greater training requirements in high-skilled occupations increase steady-state unemployment and affects the occupational structure along the transition, but their effect depends on the size of the technological shock.

JEL-codes: E24 J24 J63 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19343 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:19343

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19343

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19343