Technology, employment and skills: A look into job duration

Abstract

Technological change, being the adoption of new production processes or launching new products, affects employment and the relative demand for skills. In this context, we aim to study workers’ job duration and the role of technology-skills complementarities in manufacturing firms. Using a Portuguese matched employer–employee longitudinal data set, we apply discrete-time duration models allowing for unobserved heterogeneity. Our results show that technological intensity reinforces the positive relationship between skills and job duration. We also find that the accumulation of specific human capital measured by time dependence plays a stronger role on reducing the hazard of job separation in more technology-intensive firms.