Technology, job characteristics, and retirement of aged workers: evidence from automation and IT adoption of firms in Korea

We investigated how the adoption of a new production technology differently affects the risk of job separation of young and old employees in South Korea by analyzing establishment-level panel data linked with administrative employment insurance records on individual workers. To address potential endogeneity associated with a firm’s technology adoption, we conducted instrumental variable estimations with a two-stage residual inclusion (2SRI) approach. The results suggest that technology (indicated by newly adopted automation and increased purchase of Information Technology equipment) positively affects the overall employment of incumbent workers. However, the employment of aged workers is less favorably affected by newly adopted technologies compared to that of younger workers. In some conditions, technology adoptions increase the retirement risk of older workers absolutely as well as relative to that of younger workers. Newly adopted automation negatively affects the employment of aged workers who are engaged in clerical and support occupations or employed in the wholesale and retail industry. Estimation results according to the reason for retirement suggest that the negative effect of technology adoption on employment may be related to both labor demand and supply.