It's not necessarily who you think
Technological advances can be a double-edged sword for workers. On the one hand, new technologies can make people more productive. On the other hand, some forms of automation can also make workers obsolete.
But which workers, exactly, are most likely to suffer lost jobs or reduced income when new technologies arrive?
Bryan Seegmiller, an assistant professor of finance at Kellogg, along with Kellogg finance professor Dimitris Papanikolaou and their colleagues, sought to better understand which types of workers were historically vulnerable to being rendered obsolete by technology, and how career disruptions caused by technology affected their future earnings. They developed a novel way to measure workers’ exposure to emerging technology by identifying similarities between the tasks associated with different occupations and the descriptions in new patents. That allowed them to track how breakthrough technologies impacted the exposure of workers in relevant occupations over time.
[This article has been republished, with permission, from Kellogg Insight, the faculty research & ideas magazine of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University]