Abstract This paper investigates the change in worker flows (i.e. net growth, but also hiring and separation rates) around an investment in automation-intensive goods and, within firms, across occupational categories.… Click to show full abstract
Abstract This paper investigates the change in worker flows (i.e. net growth, but also hiring and separation rates) around an investment in automation-intensive goods and, within firms, across occupational categories. Resorting to an integrated dataset encompassing detailed information on firms, their imports, and employer-employee data for French manufacturing employers over the period 2002–2015, we identify ‘automation spikes’ using imports of capital goods embedding automation technologies. Even after controlling for firms’ non-random selection into automation, we find that automation spikes are linked to an increase in firms’ contemporaneous net employment growth rate, jointly explained by a higher hiring rate and a lower separation rate. Furthermore, we find that automation spikes are not associated with significant changes in the composition of the workforce (in terms of 1-digit and 2-digit occupational categories, and routine-intensive vs. non routine-intensive jobs).
               
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