Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor Market Adjusted to the Mechanization of Telephone Operation / James Feigenbaum, Daniel P. Gross.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Feigenbaum, James.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gross, Daniel P.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w28061.

NBER working paper series no. w28061

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

Telephone operation was among the most common jobs for young American women in the early 1900s. Between 1920 and 1940, AT&T adopted mechanical switching technology in over half of the U.S. telephone network, replacing manual operation. Although automation eliminated most of these jobs, it did not affect future cohorts' overall employment: the decline in operators was counteracted by reinstating demand in middle-skill clerical jobs and lower-skill service jobs. Using a new genealogy-based census-linking method, we show that incumbent telephone operators were most impacted, and a decade later more likely to be in lower-paying occupations or have left the labor force.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2020.