TY - UNPB
T1 - Technological progress and changes in the occupational structure of the Dutch labour market
AU - Somers, Melline
AU - Fouarge, Didier
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - The fear
that technological progress will render much of human labour obsolete is not
new. However, improved computing power and the decreasing cost of it, together with
technological advances such as machine learning and robotics have fuelled the
fear about massive job losses. On the one hand, technology does substitute for human
labour, and especially those tasks that are routine and can be codified in a
sequence of logical ‘ifthen-do’ statements are at risk. On the other hand, for workers
in abstract task-intensive occupations, technology is more likely to be a complement
that will allow workers to be more performant. We asked experts to provide us
with their judgement on which detailed tasks within occupations workers are
likely to spend more or less time in the next five years, and used that data to
depict the automation risk of occupations. We apply the automation risk data on
time series data of employment in the Netherlands for the past 25 years. We
find that employment growth in the period 1996-2020 was concentrated in
occupations with low automation risk. These are occupations with a small share
of automatable tasks, but a relatively large share of tasks on which workers
are expected to spend more time. Hence, for those occupations, we expect that
the potential loss of tasks that can be performed by machines are not
compensated by an increasing demand for human labour in non-automatable tasks. But
employment also grew substantially in occupations with a moderate automation
risk. A potential explanation for this is that the demand for workers in non-automatable
tasks has grown stronger than the substitution of workers in automatable tasks.
We confirm that technological change has gone hand in hand with a relative
decrease in employment shares of middling jobs. However, our automation risk
indicator is highest for low-income occupations and decreases almost linearly
with income ranks. One potential explanation is that our automation risk
indicator only partly captures the routineness of occupations. Moreover, our
automation risk indicator is future oriented, rather than past oriented.
AB - The fear
that technological progress will render much of human labour obsolete is not
new. However, improved computing power and the decreasing cost of it, together with
technological advances such as machine learning and robotics have fuelled the
fear about massive job losses. On the one hand, technology does substitute for human
labour, and especially those tasks that are routine and can be codified in a
sequence of logical ‘ifthen-do’ statements are at risk. On the other hand, for workers
in abstract task-intensive occupations, technology is more likely to be a complement
that will allow workers to be more performant. We asked experts to provide us
with their judgement on which detailed tasks within occupations workers are
likely to spend more or less time in the next five years, and used that data to
depict the automation risk of occupations. We apply the automation risk data on
time series data of employment in the Netherlands for the past 25 years. We
find that employment growth in the period 1996-2020 was concentrated in
occupations with low automation risk. These are occupations with a small share
of automatable tasks, but a relatively large share of tasks on which workers
are expected to spend more time. Hence, for those occupations, we expect that
the potential loss of tasks that can be performed by machines are not
compensated by an increasing demand for human labour in non-automatable tasks. But
employment also grew substantially in occupations with a moderate automation
risk. A potential explanation for this is that the demand for workers in non-automatable
tasks has grown stronger than the substitution of workers in automatable tasks.
We confirm that technological change has gone hand in hand with a relative
decrease in employment shares of middling jobs. However, our automation risk
indicator is highest for low-income occupations and decreases almost linearly
with income ranks. One potential explanation is that our automation risk
indicator only partly captures the routineness of occupations. Moreover, our
automation risk indicator is future oriented, rather than past oriented.
M3 - Working paper
T3 - ROA External Reports
BT - Technological progress and changes in the occupational structure of the Dutch labour market
PB - ROA
ER -