Do robots really destroy jobs? Evidence from Europe
While citizen opinion polls reveal that Europeans are concerned about the labour market consequences of technological progress, our understanding of the actual significance of this relationship is still imperfect. This paper assesses the impact of robot adoption on employment in Europe. Combining industry-level data from the EU KLEMS and the EU Labour Force Survey with data on robot deployment from the World Robotics Database and using difference sets of fixed-effects techniques, we find that robot adoption raises aggregate employment. Contrary to some previous studies, we do not find evidence of robots reducing the share of low-skill workers across Europe. Since the overwhelming majority of industrial robots is used in manufacturing, our findings should not be interpreted outside of this context. However, the results still hold when including non-manufacturing sectors and they are robust to different econometric specifications and robustness checks.
KLENERT David;
FERNANDEZ MACIAS Enrique;
JOSÉ-IGNACIO Antón;
2020-01-28
European Commission
JRC118393
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC118393,
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