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Partial Job Automation

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Abstract

I study the short-term and long-run effects of automation when jobs consist of multiple tasks. I present survey-based evidence that task content is heterogeneous within jobs, and that task composition changes with technology use. An assignment-based model predicts that task-level automation generates competing displacement and augmentation effects, which endogenously give rise to labor polarization - but only in the short-run, with wage inequality and job losses abating as capital prices fall. The structurally estimated model is better able to account for the historical relationships between occupational PC use, wages, and employment, but delivers predictions regarding tax policy and the effects of AI adoption that diverge sharply from conventional models of job-level automation.

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  • Mouton, Andre, 2025. "Partial Job Automation," Working Papers 125, Wake Forest University, Economics Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:wfuewp:0125
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Automation; Polarization; Capital-Labor Substitution;
    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
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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