German Robots - The Impact of Industrial Robots on Workers

60 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2017

See all articles by Wolfgang Dauth

Wolfgang Dauth

Institute for Employment Research (IAB)

Sebastian Findeisen

University of Zurich; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Jens Suedekum

Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Nicole Woessner

Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf - Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)

Date Written: September 2017

Abstract

We study the impact of rising robot exposure on the careers of individual manufacturing workers, and the equilibrium impact across industries and local labor markets in Germany. We find no evidence that robots cause total job losses, but they do affect the composition of aggregate employment. Every robot destroys two manufacturing jobs. This accounts for almost 23% of the overall decline of manufacturing employment in Germany over the period 1994-2014, roughly 275,000 jobs. But this loss was fully offset by additional jobs in the service sector. Moreover, robots have not raised the displacement risk for incumbent manufacturing workers. Quite in contrast, more robot exposed workers are even more likely to remain employed in their original workplace, though not necessarily performing the same tasks, and the aggregate manufacturing decline is solely driven by fewer new jobs for young labor market entrants. This enhanced job stability for insiders comes at the cost of lower wages. The negative impact of robots on individual earnings arises mainly for medium-skilled workers in machine-operating occupations, while high-skilled managers gain. In the aggregate, robots raise labor productivity but not wages. Thereby they contribute to the decline of the labor income share.

Keywords: Germany, labor market effects, robots, skill-biased technological change

JEL Classification: F16, J24, O33, R11

Suggested Citation

Dauth, Wolfgang and Findeisen, Sebastian and Südekum, Jens and Woessner, Nicole, German Robots - The Impact of Industrial Robots on Workers (September 2017). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP12306, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3039031

Wolfgang Dauth (Contact Author)

Institute for Employment Research (IAB) ( email )

Regensburger Str. 104
Nuremberg, 90478
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.iab.de/en/ueberblick/mitarbeiter.aspx/Mitarbeiter/603

Sebastian Findeisen

University of Zurich ( email )

Rämistrasse 71
Zürich, CH-8006
Switzerland

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Jens Südekum

Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) ( email )

Universitaetsstr. 1
Duesseldorf, NRW 40225
Germany

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Nicole Woessner

Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf - Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) ( email )

Universitaetsstr. 1
Duesseldorf, NRW 40225
Germany

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