Back to the Future - Changing Job Profiles in the Digital Age

Fabian Stephany and Hanno Lorenz

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: The uniqueness of human labour is at question in times of smart technologies. The 250 years-old discussion on technological unemployment reawakens. Frey and Osborne (2013) estimate that half of US employment will be automated by algorithms within the next 20 years. Other follow-up studies conclude that only a small fraction of workers will be replaced by digital technologies. The main contribution of our work is to show that the diversity of previous findings regarding the degree of job automation is, to a large extent, driven by model selection and not by controlling for personal characteristics or tasks. For our case study, we consult Austrian experts in machine learning and industry professionals on the susceptibility to digital technologies in the Austrian labour market. Our results indicate that, while clerical computer-based routine jobs are likely to change in the next decade, professional activities, such as the processing of complex information, are less prone to digital change.

Keywords: Classification; Employment; GLM; Technological Change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J24 J31 J62 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-hrm, nep-ict, nep-lma, nep-mac and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Back to the Future - Changing Job Profiles in the Digital Age (2019)
Working Paper: Back to the future: Changing job profiles in the digital age (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:202035

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