Computerization of White Collar Jobs / Marcus Dillender, Eliza Forsythe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dillender, Marcus.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Forsythe, Eliza.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w29866.

NBER working paper series no. w29866

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

We investigate the impact of computerization of white-collar jobs on wages and employment. Using online job postings from 2007 and 2010--2016 for office and administrative support (OAS) jobs, we show that when firms adopt new software at the job-title level they increase the skills required of job applicants. Furthermore, firms change the task content of such jobs, broadening them to include tasks associated with higher-skill office functions. We aggregate these patterns to the local labor-market level, instrumenting for local technology adoption with national measures. We find that a 1 standard deviation increase in OAS technology usage reduces employment in OAS occupations by about 1 percentage point and increases wages for college graduates in OAS jobs by over 3 percent. We find negative wage spillovers, with wages falling for both workers with and without a college degree. These results are consistent with technological adoption inducing a realignment in task assignment across occupations, leading office support occupations to become higher skill. We argue relative wage gains for OAS workers indicates that factor-augmenting features of OAS technological change dominate task-substituting features. In addition, while we find that total employment increases, these gains primarily accrue to college-educated women.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2022.