“How much does new technology augment employment, by creating new work and viable jobs, and how much does new technology replace existing jobs, through automation? “
– Peter Dizikes
A landmark study of job definitions over time spotlights the influences of technology and transformation on employment. The research was led by MIT economist David Autor.
The report finds about 60% of current jobs did not exist in 1940.
The study is published in Quarterly Journal of Economics. See “New Frontiers: The Origins and Content of New Work, 1940-2018”
ABSTRACT
We answer three core questions about the hypothesized role of newly emerging job categories (“new work”) in counterbalancing the erosive effect of task-displacing automation on labor demand: what is the substantive content of new work, where does it come from, and what effect does it have on labor demand? We construct a novel database spanning eight decades of new job titles linked to U.S. Census microdata and to patent-based measures of occupations’ exposure to labor-augmenting and labor-automating innovations. The majority of current employment is in new job specialties introduced since 1940, but the locus of new-work creation has shifted from middle-paid production and clerical occupations over 1940–1980 to high-paid professional occupations and secondarily to low-paid services since 1980. New work emerges in response to technological innovations that complement the outputs of occupations and demand shocks that raise occupational demand. Innovations that automate tasks or reduce occupational demand slow new-work emergence. Although the flow of augmentation and automation innovations is positively correlated across occupations, the former boosts occupational labor demand while the latter depresses it. The demand-eroding effects of automation innovations have intensified in the past four decades while the demand-increasing effects of augmentation innovations have not.
Most work is new work, long-term study of U.S. census data shows | MIT NEWS | April 1, 2024 | by Peter Dizikes