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The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration (2000)
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@MISC{Autor00theskill,
author = {David H. Autor and Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane},
title = { The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration},
year = {2000}
}
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Abstract
Recent empirical and case study evidence documents a strong association between the adoption of computers and increased use of college educated or non-production workers. With few exceptions, the conceptual link explaining how computer technology complements skilled labor or substitutes for unskilled labor is less well developed. In this paper, we apply an understanding of what computers do – the execution of procedural or rules-based logic – to develop a simple model of how the widespread adoption of computers in the workplace might alter workplace skill demands. An essential contention of our framework is that, to a first approximation, computer capital substitutes for a limited and well-defined set of human activities, those involving repetitive information processing (cognitive) and routine manual tasks. This observation leads to a set of hypotheses that we test using samples of workers from Census and CPS files for 1960 – 1998 augmented with Dictionary of Occupational Title variables describing their occupations ’ requirements for routine and non-routine cognitive and manual skills. We find that computerization is associated with declining relative industry demand for routine manual and cognitive skills and increased relative demand for non-routine cognitive skills (both interactive and analytical). We document that these demand shifts are evident both in changes in occupational distributions within
Keyphrases
recent technological change skill content preliminary comment empirical exploration occupation requirement human activity computer capital substitute manual skill occupational distribution increased use well-defined set repetitive information processing demand shift workplace skill first approximation widespread adoption cognitive skill simple model computer technology complement conceptual link cps file non-routine cognitive relative demand relative industry demand non-production worker essential contention rules-based logic strong association case study evidence document occupational title variable routine manual task unskilled labor non-routine cognitive skill
