Labour-saving automation: A direct measure of occupational exposure

Abstract

This article represents one of the first attempts at building a direct measure of occupational exposure to robotic labour-saving technologies. After identifying robotic and labour-saving robotic patents, the underlying 4-digit CPC (Cooperative Patent Classification) code definitions, together with O*NET (Occupational Information Network) task descriptions, are employed to detect functions and operations which are more directed to substituting the labour input and their exposure to labour-saving automation. This measure allows us to obtain fine-grained information on tasks and occupations according to their text similarity ranking. Occupational exposure by wage and employment dynamics in the United States is then studied, and complemented by investigating industry and geographical penetration rates.