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Title: White Collar Technological Change: Evidence from Job Posting Data

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2019

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Abstract: We investigate the impact of computerization of white collar jobs on wages and employment. Using online job postings from 2007 and 2010–2016 for office and administrative support (OAS) jobs, we show that when firms adopt new software at the job-title-level they increase the skills required of job applicants. Further, firms change the task content of such jobs, broadening them to include tasks associated with higherskill office functions. We aggregate these patterns to the local labor market level, instrumenting for local technology adoption with national measures. We find that a one standard deviation increase in OAS technology usage reduces employment in OAS occupations by about one percentage point and increases wages for college graduates in OAS jobs by over three percent. We find negative wage spillovers, with wages falling for both workers with no college experience and college graduates. These losses are in part driven by high-skill office occupations. These results are consistent with technological adoption inducing a realignment in task assignment across occupations, leading office support occupations to become higher-skill and hence less at risk from further automation. In addition, we find total employment increases with computerization, despite the direct job losses in OAS employment.

Url: https://extranet.sioe.org/uploads/sioe2019/dillender_forsythe.pdf

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Authors: Dillender, Marcus; Forsythe, Eliza

Publisher: Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

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