Pandemic Work Mode and Automation: Evidence from South Korea

Youngsoon Kwon, Myungkyu Shim and Hee-Seung Yang ()
Additional contact information
Youngsoon Kwon: Bank of Korea
Myungkyu Shim: Yonsei University

No 2024rwp-236, Working papers from Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute

Abstract: Does the COVID-19 crisis accelerate automation? We investigate this question by analyzing employment trends based on occupational COVID-19 exposure and automation potential, key factors influencing post-pandemic automation. Using micro-level data from South Korea (2016–2022), we find a persistent decline in employment for occupations with high exposure and high automatability since the pandemic outbreak. In contrast, other occupations have largely recovered to pre-pandemic employment levels after an initial decline. These findings suggest that the pandemic has incentivized firms to adopt labor-replacing technologies to mitigate the business risks associated with viral transmission.

Keywords: Automation; COVID-19; Employment; Technology adoption; South Korea (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 I15 J21 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41pages
Date: 2024-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-mac and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://121.254.254.220/repec/yon/wpaper/2024rwp-236.pdf (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:yon:wpaper:2024rwp-236

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by YERI ().