Skilled Labor Supply, IT-Based Technical Change and Job Instability

Luc Behaghel and Julie Moschion ()

No 6839, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We provide empirical evidence on the impact of IT diffusion on the stability of employment relationships. We document the evolution of different components of job instability over a panel of 348 local labor markets in France, from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. Although workers in more educated local labor markets adopt IT faster, they do not experience any increase in job instability. More specifically, we find no evidence that the diffusion of IT increases job-to-job transitions, and we find that it tends to reduce transitions to non-employment among high-school dropouts. Overall, the evidence goes against the view that the diffusion of IT has spurred job instability. Combining local labor market variations with firm data, we argue that these findings can be explained by French firms’ strong reliance on training and internal promotion strategies in order to meet the new skills requirement associated with IT diffusion.

Keywords: internal labor markets; job security; skill bias; labor turnover; technical change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2012-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-lma
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Published - published as 'IT-Based Technical Change and Job Instability' in: Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2016, 118 (1), 79 - 104

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Related works:
Working Paper: Skilled Labor Supply,IT-Based Technical Change and Job Instability (2016)
Working Paper: Skilled Labor Supply,IT-Based Technical Change and Job Instability (2016)
Working Paper: Skilled labor supply, IT-based technical change and job instability (2011)
Working Paper: Skilled labor supply, IT-based technical change and job instability (2011)
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