Learning and Work Hybrid Seminars, Maastricht University, SBE, Autumn 2024

When: November 26
Time: 12h00 – 13h00
Where: TS53 - A0.23

Presenter: Milena Nikolova (University of Groningen) 
Title: Adjusters and Casualties: The Anatomy of Labor
Market Displacement

Abstract: How does robotization change the job content of individual workers? Do they report doing less routine and more cognitively challenging work? This talk explores how robotization changes affect the quality and content of jobs from a worker-level perspective. Using survey data from 20 European countries, we construct novel worker-level indices of routine, abstract, social, and physical tasks, which we combine with industry-level robotization exposure. Our conceptual framework builds on the insight that robotization simultaneously replaces, creates, and modifies workers’ tasks and studies how these forces impact workers’ job content. We rely on instrumental variable techniques and show that robotization reduces physically demanding activities. Yet, this reduction in manual work does not coincide with a shift to more challenging and interesting tasks. Instead, robotization makes workers’ activities more routine, while diminishing the opportunities for cognitively challenging work and human contact. This finding complements our previous work that robotization reduces the work meaningfulness and autonomy of European workers. Our study offers a rare worker-centric viewpoint on the interplay between technology and tasks, highlighting nuances that macro-level indicators overlook. As such, it sheds light on the mechanisms underpinning the impact of robotization on labor markets.
 
December 3: Nienke Ruijs (Education Lab / ROA) 
December 10: Henning Hermes (Ifo, Munich)
December 17: Nicholas Ziebarth (ZEW, Mannheim)

November 19: Adjusters and Casualties: The Anatomy of Labor 
Market Displacement - Simon Janssen (IAB)
Oktober 29: Matching in the German VET Market - Leonie   Wicht / Bernd Fitzenberger (IAB)
Oktober 22: Inherited Gender Norms and Cognitive Functioning in Later Life: An Analysis of Second-Generation Immigrants - Eric Bonsang (Dauphine PSL)
Oktober 15: Lost in Transition: Labour in GEMINI-E3 - Eoghan O'Connell (MILE)
Oktober 8: Does early adoption drive AI use?  Spatio-temporal aspects of AI adoption in Dutch firms 2012-2020 and New skill adoption and cities - Harm-Jan Rouwendal (University of Groningen) 
September 17: On the Generalizability of Sex-Differences in Risk Attitudes - Jan Feld (Victoria University of Wellington)
September 12: Apprentices, Robots, or both? Automation Technologies and initial workplace training - Caroline Neuber-Pohl (BIBB)
September 3: Unlocking Equal Opportunities - Social inequality in university enrollment and how it can be reduced - Marita Jacob (University of Cologne)