Adjusting to Robots: Worker-Level Evidence

Wolfgang Dauth, Sebastian Findeisen, Jens Suedekum and Nicole Woessner

No 13, Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: We estimate the effect of industrial robots on employment, wages, and the composition of jobs in German labor markets between 1994 and 2014. We find that the adoption of industrial robots had no effect on total employment in local labor markets specializing in industries with high robot usage. Robot adoption led to job losses in manufacturing that were offset by gains in the business service sector. We analyze the impact on individual workers and find that robot adoption has not increased the risk of displacement for incumbent manufacturing workers. They stay with their original employer, and many workers adjust by switching occupations at their original workplace. The loss of manufacturing jobs is solely driven by fewer new jobs for young labor market entrants. Moreover, we find that, in regions with higher exposure to automation, labor productivity increases while the labor share in total income declines.

Keywords: Automation; Labor market institutions; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 J24 O33 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2018-08-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lma, nep-ltv, nep-tid and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers-institute/iwp13.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

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:fip:fedmoi:0013

DOI: 10.21034/iwp.13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kate Hansel ().