Automation, workers’ skills and job satisfaction

Abstract

When industrial robots are adopted by firms in a local labor market, some workers are displaced and become unemployed. Other workers that are not directly affected by automation may however fear that these new technologies might replace their working tasks in the future. This fear of a possible future replacement is important because it negatively affects workers’ job satisfaction at present. This paper studies the extent to which automation affects workers’ job satisfaction, and whether this effect differs for high- versus low-skilled workers. The empirical analysis uses microdata for several thousand workers in Norway from the Working Life Barometer survey for the period 2016–2019, combined with information on the introduction of industrial robots in Norway from the International Federation of Robotics. Our identification strategy exploits variation in the pace of introduction of industrial robots in Norwegian regions and industries since 2007 to instrument workers’ fear of replacement. The results indicate that automation in industrial firms in recent years have induced 40% of the workers that are currently in employment to fear that their work might be replaced by a smart machine in the future. Such fear of future replacement does negatively affect workers’ job satisfaction at present. This negative effect is driven by low-skilled workers, which are those carrying out routine-based tasks, and who are therefore more exposed to the risks of automation.

Is There a Sampling Bias in Research on Work-Related Technostress? A Systematic Review of Occupational Exposure to Technostress and the Role of Socioeconomic Position

“…Previous findings suggest that it may be important to individually examine associations between SEP and individual techno-stressors. With regard to techno-insecurity, recent studies found negative implications for workers’ psychological reactions [ 21 ] and job satisfaction [ 22 ]. The negative effect on job satisfaction is driven by low SEP workers, which are those carrying out routine-based tasks, and who are therefore more exposed to the risks of substitution at work [ 22 ].…”

“…With regard to techno-insecurity, recent studies found negative implications for workers’ psychological reactions [ 21 ] and job satisfaction [ 22 ]. The negative effect on job satisfaction is driven by low SEP workers, which are those carrying out routine-based tasks, and who are therefore more exposed to the risks of substitution at work [ 22 ]. A nationally representative German survey indicated that on average, 13% of workers reported high levels of techno-insecurity and showed that there is a clear social gradient, as 28% of workers with lower education expressed this expectation [ 23 ].…”

Better Together? An Evaluation of AI-Supported Code Translation

“…On the one hand, our results suggest that AI for Code systems can reduce the skills and education necessary to conduct high-quality software translation tasks, thus democratizing this kind of work in the same way that other AI technologies have democratized other tasks in software engineering, machine learning, data science, and even design [3,22,83,89,93,101]. On the other hand, we realize that the automation of one part of a task may cascade into a radical automation of its entirety [53], possibly leading to a complete erasure of humans from the task, which would subsequently cause a number of human and societal harms [10,23,63,83,84].…”

The Changing (Dis-)Utility of Work

“…In addition, even though OCC1990 is harmonized, it is not entirely uniform over time because of changes in the level of detail in the census occupation variables. 1 To improve the uniformity of the coding and to ensure a reasonably large number of people are used to calculate workers' feelings in each occupation, we aggregate the occupations to 12 broad categories. (We exclude military occupations.)…”