Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2023
ISSN
1530-9142
Publisher
MIT Press
Language
en-US
Abstract
We provide the first estimate of the impacts of automation on individual workers by combining Dutch micro-data with a direct measure of automation expenditures covering firms in all private non-financial industries over 2000-2016. Using an event study differences-indifferences design, we find that automation at the firm increases the probability of workers separating from their employers and decreases days worked, leading to a 5-year cumulative wage income loss of about 8% of one year’s earnings for incumbent workers. We find little change in wage rates. Further, lost wage earnings are only partially offset by various benefits systems and are disproportionately borne by older workers and workers with longer firm tenure. Compared to findings from a literature on mass layoffs, the effects of automation are more gradual and automation displaces far fewer workers, both at the individual firms and in the workforce overall.
Recommended Citation
James Bessen, Martin Goos, Anna Salomons & Wiljan van den Berge,
Automatic Reaction - What Happens to Workers at Firms that Automate?
,
in
The Review of Economics and Statistics
(2023).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/584
January 2022 draft also available at SSRN
Comments
Update: Article published on Feb. 6, 2023.
Published article is from November 2022.
This page has been updated with the January 2022 draft.
Original 2019 added to extra files.