Technical change and automation of routine tasks: Evidence from local labour markets in France, 1999‑2011

Abstract

In France as well as in other developed economies, a skill-biased labour demand shift occurred in the past three decades. We test one of the main hypotheses put forward to explain this particular shift : a skill-biased technical change driven by the dissemination of Information and Communication Technologies and the automation of routine tasks, leading to their disappearance in favour of high-skilled and service jobs. Using a theoretical model developed by Autor and Dorn (2013) based on the employment structure of local labour markets to identify national effects of technical change, we find evidence of a link between technical change and the 1990-2011 evolution of the labour force in France. In particular, we find that low-skilled workers switch from routine jobs to service jobs or unemployment. We also find that the shift in labour demand interacts with a spatial functional specialisation. These results are robust when other hypotheses, such as globalisation and the growth of international trade, or demographic change, are taken into account.