Labour-saving automation and occupational exposure: A text-similarity measure
Fabio Montobbio, Jacopo Staccioli, Maria Enrica Virgillito & Marco Vivarelli
#2021-044
This paper represents one of the first attempts at building a direct
measure of occupational exposure to robotic labour-saving technologies.
After identifying robotic and LS robotic patents retrieved by Montobbio
et al. (2022), the underlying 4-digit CPC definitions are employed in
order to detect functions and operations performed by technological
artefacts which are more directed to substitute the labour input. This
measure allows to obtain fine-grained information on tasks and
occupations according to their similarity ranking. Occupational exposure
by wage and employment dynamics in the United States is then studied,
complemented by investigating industry and geographical penetration
rates.
JEL classification: O33, J24
Keywords: Labour-Saving Technology, Natural Language Processes, Labour
Markets, Technological Unemployment