IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/99792.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Labor Market Impact of Digital Technologies

Author

Listed:
  • Sangmin Aum
  • Yongseok Shin

Abstract

We investigate the impact of digital technology on employment patterns in Korea, where firms have rapidly adopted digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud computing. By exploiting regional variations in technology exposure, we find significant negative effects on female workers, particularly those in non-IT (information technology) services. This contrasts with previous technological disruptions, such as the IT revolution and robotization, which primarily affected male workers in manufacturing. The negative employment effect of AI did not differ across educational groups, but big data and cloud computing more negatively affected workers with less education. In IT services, although employment shares of professionals and technicians declined, vacancy postings for these positions increased, implying a shift in labor demand toward newer skill sets within the same occupations. These findings highlight both the labor displacement and the new opportunities generated by digital transformation.

Suggested Citation

  • Sangmin Aum & Yongseok Shin, 2025. "The Labor Market Impact of Digital Technologies," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 107(5), pages 1-10, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:99792
    DOI: 10.20955/r.2025.05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed/publications/review/pdfs/2025/apr/labor-market-impacts-of-digital-technologies.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20955/r.2025.05?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    digital technologies; artificial intelligence (AI); big data; cloud computing; labor markets; female workers; South Korea;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:99792. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.