The digital transformation will have large effects on the labour market. Previous studies mostly reveal that half of all current jobs are susceptible to automation in the next 10 to 20 years. They calculate automation probabilities – labelled as substitution potentials – for occupations in Germany by using German occupational data from an expert database. Considering approximately 8000 tasks, they assess whether they can be replaced by computers or computer-controlled machines according to programmable rules. They do not give a forecast for the future but estimate existing technological possibilities. They find that 34% of German employees are at risk in 2019. Furthermore, they provide evidence on the relationship between automation risks and employment growth as well as between automation risks and job quality such as job insecurity and work exposure.
About the speaker
Dr Katharina Dengler is a senior researcher at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), where she heads the “Digital and Ecological Transformation” working group. She studied economics at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. She was a scholarship holder of the Graduate Programme of the IAB and the School of Business and Economics of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, where she received her doctorate degree (Dr. rer. pol.) in 2016. Her research interests focus on the impacts of digital transformation on the labour market, the task-based approach, and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for the labor market.