Documents Graetz, Georg 6 results

"Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. One possible explanation for these "jobless" recoveries is rooted in technological change: middle-skill jobs, often involving routine tasks, are lost during recessions, and the displaced workers take time to transition into other jobs (Jaimovich and Siu, 2014). But technological replacement of middle-skill workers is not unique to the US – it also takes place in other developed countries (Goos, Manning, and Salomons, 2014). So if jobless recoveries in the US are due to technology, we might expect to also see them elsewhere in the developed world. We test this possibility using data on recoveries from 71 recessions in 28 industries and 17 countries from 1970-2011. We find that though GDP recovered more slowly after recent recessions, employment did not. Industries that used more routine tasks, and those more exposed to robotization, did not recently experience slower employment recoveries. Finally, middle-skill employment did not recover more slowly after recent recessions, and this pattern was no different in routine-intensive industries. Taken together, this evidence suggests that technology is not causing jobless recoveries in developed countries outside the US."

"In this paper we estimate the sorting effects of university degree class on initial labor market outcomes using a regression discontinuity design that exploits institutional rules governing the award of degrees. Consistent with anecdotal evidence, we find sizeable and significant effects for Upper Second degrees and positive but smaller effects for First Class degrees on wages. In additional results we explore differences across groups and find evidence consistent with a simple model of statistical discrimination on the basis of gender and types of degree programmes. When we split the sample by ability, we find that the signaling effects are similar in the high ability group but stronger for Upper Second degrees in the lower ability group. The evidence points to the importance of sorting in the high skills labor market."

"What are the earnings and employment losses that workers suffer when demand for their occupations declines? To answer this question we combine forecasts on occupational employment changes, which allow us to identify unanticipated declines; administrative data on the population of Swedish workers, spanning several decades; and a highly detailed occupational classification. We find that, compared to similar workers, those facing occupational decline lost about 2-5 percent of mean cumulative earnings from 1986-2013. But workers at the bottom of their occupations' initial earnings distributions suffered considerably larger losses. These earnings losses are partly accounted for by reduced employment, and increased unemployment and retraining."

"This paper presents evidence suggesting that although the demand for labour remained resilient to technological change in the past, in recent decades, automation has led to a decline in the demand for labour.

DG ECFIN's Fellowship Initiative 2018-2019 “The Productivity Challenge: Jobs and Incomes in the Dawning Era of Intelligent Robots” has solicited contributions examining current and possible future productivity developments in Europe. In view of possible hysteresis effects after the crisis and in the general context of ageing populations and globalisation, the aim has been to re-examine the ongoing trends and drivers and to identify policies to tap fully the potential for inclusive productivity growth. The fellowships have been awarded to prominent scholars in the field to interact with staff in ECFIN and other Commission colleagues, and to prepare final reports on specific research questions within this general topic."

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, technological change has led to the automation of existing tasks and the creation of new ones, as well as the reallocation of labor across occupations and industries. These processes have been costly to individual workers, but labor demand has remained strong, and real wages have steadily increased in line with productivity growth. I provide evidence suggesting, however, that in recent decades automation has outpaced the creation of new tasks and thus the demand for labor has declined. There is strong disagreement about the future of labor demand, and predictions about technological breakthroughs have a poor track record. Given the importance of overall labor demand for workers' standard of living as well as their ability to adjust to a changing labor market, obtaining accurate forecasts should be a priority for policy makers."

"In order to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, establishments had to invest in digital technologies. It remains unclear whether this has widened the ”digital divide“ between establishments - in other words, whether establishments experienced with new digital (so-called) 4.0 technologies have invested more heavily in further digitalization than establishments that had no experience of using such technologies before the pandemic. This question can be examined for the first time using data from the new IAB-IZA-ZEW ”Labor Market 4.0 Establishment Survey“. It shows that there was a digitalization boost due to the pandemic in only a few establishments. In fact, it was mainly establishments that had already gained experience with 4.0 technologies prior to the pandemic that made COVID-related investments so that the digital divide between establishments widened during the pandemic."
"Um in der Covid-19-Pandemie bestehen zu können, mussten Betriebe in digitale Technologien investieren. Offen ist bislang, ob der „digitale Graben” zwischen den Betrieben dadurch tiefer geworden ist – ob also digitalisierungserfahrene Betriebe stärker in eine weitere Digitalisierung investiert haben als Betriebe, die vor der Pandemie noch keine Erfahrung mit dem Einsatz solcher Technologien gemacht hatten. Diese Frage kann erstmals mit Daten der neuen IAB-IZA-ZEW-Betriebsbefragung „Arbeitswelt 4.0“ untersucht werden. Dabei zeigt sich, dass es während der Covid-19-Pandemie nur in wenigen Betrieben zu einem Digitalisierungsschub kam. Tatsächlich haben vor allem Betriebe, die vor der Pandemie schon Erfahrung mit sogenannten 4.0-Technologien gesammelt hatten, coronabedingte Investitionen getätigt, sodass sich der digitale Graben zwischen den Betrieben während der Pandemie vertieft hat."