The End of Work is Near, Isn’t It? Survey Evidence on Automation Angst

Arntz, Melanie; Blesse, Sebastian; Dörrenberg, Philipp

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4247981

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…As pointed out in the literature section, the presence of a reassuring effect of technological innovations in surviving workers is, in our view, not sufficiently emphasised in the current public debate, which has been biased towards warning about the labour-saving nature of new technologies (Arntz et al ., 2023). The biased nature of the debate, in turn, has fed the most pessimistic projections, making people overlook the fact that the empirical evidence on the labour-saving effects of technological innovations is mixed (as explained in Section 2).…”

Section: Implications For Societymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The biased nature of the debate, in turn, has fed the most pessimistic projections, making people overlook the fact that the empirical evidence on the labour-saving effects of technological innovations is mixed (as explained in Section 2). Given that people's perceptions depend on the information they receive, and not just on their prior beliefs (Arntz et al ., 2023), what people learn from their direct experience with innovation is important and should receive attention.…”

Section: Implications For Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A rich economic literature has offered abundant evidence about the growing importance of firm innovation, digitalization and automation in determining employment dynamics, providing different and controversial conclusions about the actual effects of technological innovation on individuals, occupations, industries and regions (see, among the most recent reviews of the literature, Mondolo, 2022; Filippi et al ., 2023). This notwithstanding, the public debate has been traditionally biased towards negative narratives, stressing the alleged labour-saving nature of new technologies (Arntz et al ., 2023; Jeffrey, 2021). Given the uncertainty regarding the actual impact of technological innovations on employment and the persistence of one-sided negative narratives among the general public, it is of upmost importance to explore the relationship between perceived job insecurity and technological innovations for those workers who have had a direct experience of technological innovations in the companies where they are employed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The importance of workers' direct experience of technological innovations cannot be understated as it represents an important source of information for the formation of individuals' perceptions (Arntz et al ., 2023). McClure (2018) shows that the workers who display more anxiety-related issues associated with unemployment concerns are those who fear the technology that they do not understand.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The reassuring effect of firms' technological innovations on workers' job insecurity

Caselli,

Fracasso,

Marcolin

et al. 2023

IJM

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PurposeThis work analyses how the adoption of technological innovations correlates with workers' perceived levels of job insecurity, and what factors moderate such relationship.Design/methodology/approachThe study makes use of the 2018 wave of the Participation, Labour, Unemployment Survey (PLUS) from Inapp. The richness of the survey and the representativeness of the underlying sample (including 13,837 employed workers) allow employing various empirical specifications where it is possible to control and moderate for many socio-demographic features of the worker, including her occupation and industry of employment, thereby accounting for various potential confounding factors.FindingsThe results of this ordered logit estimations show that workers' perception of job insecurity is affected by many subjective, firm-related and even macroeconomic factors. This study demonstrates that the adoption of technological innovations by companies is associated with lower levels of job insecurity perceived by their workers. In fact, the adoption of technological innovations by a company is perceived by surviving workers (those who remain in the same firm even after the introduction of such innovations) as a signal of the firm's health and its commitment to preserving the activity. Individual- and occupation-specific moderating factors play a limited role.Originality/valueThis study estimates how perceived job insecurity relates to the technological innovations adopted by the firms in which the interviewees are employed rather than analyzing their general concerns about job insecurity. In addition, this study identifies different types of innovations, such as product and process innovation, automation and other types of innovations.

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Section: Implications For Societymentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Implications For Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The reassuring effect of firms' technological innovations on workers' job insecurity

Caselli,

Fracasso,

Marcolin

et al. 2023

IJM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…with the notion that automation could lead to unfair disruptions in the labor market can increase preferences for redistribution. Arntz et al (2022) provide two pieces of aggregate information about labor-market effects of automation (i.e., no aggregate employment losses, employment shift from unskilled to skilled workers). They find that information about zero net employment effects reduces concerns about automation but does not affect stated labor-market behavior and donations to NGOs.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%