The Bank for International Settlements published a working paper analysing how sector-level robot adoption and investment in information and communication technologies (ICT) affect employment and hours worked across 20 European Union countries from 1995 to 2020. The paper concludes that automation’s labour-market effects are highly context-dependent, varying with both a sector’s starting level of robot use and its subsequent ICT investment. In sectors that began the period without robots, greater robot adoption and higher ICT investment are associated with faster growth in employment and hours worked, consistent with technology complementing labour at early stages of adoption. In sectors that already used robots, the relationship becomes non-linear: employment tends to rise with faster robot adoption when ICT investment is modest, and to rise with higher ICT investment when robot adoption is limited, but combining strong robot adoption with high ICT investment is linked to weaker employment growth that can turn negative. The estimates suggest a one standard deviation increase in robotisation raises annual employment growth by about 0.8 percentage points in low-ICT investment settings, but lowers it by about 0.4 percentage points in high-ICT investment settings, with similar patterns for hours worked indicating adjustment mainly through headcount rather than changes in working time.

Original source View in tracker