The impact of ICT and robots on labour market outcomes of demographic groups in Europe

Abstract

We study the age- and gender-specific labour market effects of two key modern technologies, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and robots. Our sample includes 14 European countries between 2010 and 2018. We use the variation in technology adoption between industries and apply the instrumental variables strategy proposed by Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020) to identify the causal effects of technology adoption. We find that exposure to ICT and robots increased the shares of young and prime-aged women in employment and in the wage bills of particular sectors. However, it reduced the shares of older women and prime-aged men. We do not detect significant effects of technology adoption on the relative wages of most demographic groups. Between 2010 and 2018, the growth in ICT capital played a larger role than robot adoption in the changes in the within-sector labour market outcomes of demographic groups.