Cities, Tasks, and Skills

Kok, Suzanne; Weel, Bas ter

doi:10.1111/jors.12125

Cited by 24 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Computational/Analytical, Managerial, Organization, and Relational skills are more likely to be present in specialized and resilient cities ( figure 6 a , c ), while Physical Coordination and Control/Perceptual skills indicate both decreased specialization and decreased resilience in cities ( figure 6 b , d ). We confirm our results using alternative groups of workplace tasks [ 42 ] provided by O*NET (see electronic supplementary material, S5.1) and again by examining the routineness of workplace tasks [ 14 ] (see electronic supplementary material, S5.2). Figure 6 e reflects the same conclusion by comparing the relationship of each skill type to city size (right column) and expected job impact (middle column; see electronic supplementary material, S6.4 for comparison with raw O*NET skills).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Small cities face greater impact from automation

Frank

Sun

Cebrián

et al. 2018

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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The city has proved to be the most successful form of human agglomeration and provides wide employment opportunities for its dwellers. As advances in robotics and artificial intelligence revive concerns about the impact of automation on jobs, a question looms: how will automation affect employment in cities? Here, we provide a comparative picture of the impact of automation across US urban areas. Small cities will undertake greater adjustments, such as worker displacement and job content substitutions. We demonstrate that large cities exhibit increased occupational and skill specialization due to increased abundance of managerial and technical professions. These occupations are not easily automatable, and, thus, reduce the potential impact of automation in large cities. Our results pass several robustness checks including potential errors in the estimation of occupational automation and subsampling of occupations. Our study provides the first empirical law connecting two societal forces: urban agglomeration and automation's impact on employment.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Small cities face greater impact from automation

Frank

Sun

Cebrián

et al. 2018

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…Empirical work on polarization now covers the U.S. , Europe (Gregory, Salomons, & Zierahn, 2016) as well as individual countries (i.e., Adermon & Gustavson, 2011;Asplund, Barth, Lundborg, & Nilsen, 2011;Dauth, 2014;Fonseca, Lima, & Pereira, 2018;Harrigan, Reshef, & Toubal, 2016;Salvatori, 2015). The task-based approach has become popular also among economic geographers who study the impact of local occupational structures on competitive performance in metropolitan areas and regions (Bacolod, Blum, & Strange, 2010;Feser, 2003;Kok & Ter Weel, 2014;Scott, 2010;Scott & Mantegna, 2009). 3 This paper articulates the convergence of the aforementioned two research strands within an economic geography approach.…”

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confidence: 99%

Polarization and the growth of low‐skill service jobs in Spanish local labor markets

Consoli

Sánchez‐Barrioluengo

2018

Journal of Regional Science

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This paper analyzes the long‐term transformations of the occupational structure in 50 provinces of Spain with a view to ascertain the existence and assess the extent of employment polarization. The peculiar characteristics of this country, namely rigid labor markets and the relatively recent transition to democracy, make for an interesting addition to existing studies on this topic. In line with previous literature on other countries, we find a strong association between the decline of “routine” mid‐skill jobs and the expansion of low‐skill service employment as well as differential labor market outcomes by levels of formal education. Results are robust to various controls and instrumental variables that account for long‐term industry specialization. We also find a positive local multiplier effect of high‐skilled workers on the demand for nontradable service jobs.

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“…People still needed to move to cities to look for work. In line with this argument, research suggests that cities have benefited disproportionately more than rural areas from reduced communication and search costs associated with the Internet (Forman et al, 2018;Kok and Weel, 2014), and that digital platforms reinforced the importance of spatial proximity and cities (Baker and Ward, 2002;Davidson and Poor, 2018;Mollick, 2014;Verboord and Noord, 2016).…”

Section: Background: the Tenacity Of Distancementioning

confidence: 99%

ICTs and the Urban-Rural Divide: Can Online Labour Platforms Bridge the Gap?

Braesemann¹,

Lehdonvirta²,

Kässi³

2019

Preprint

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Information and communication technologies have long been predicted to make cities as hubs of economic organisation obsolete and spread economic opportunities to rural areas. However, the actual trend in the 21st century has been the opposite. Knowledge spillovers have fuelled urbanisation and pulled job-seekers into large cities, increasing the gap to deprived rural areas. We argue that new assemblages of technologies and social practices, so-called ’online labour platforms’, have recently started to counter this trend. By providing effective formal and informal mechanisms of enforcing cooperation, these platforms for project-based remote knowledge work enable users to hire and find work across distance. In analysing data from a leading online labour platform in more than 3,000 urban and rural counties in the United States, we find that rural workers made disproportionate use of the online labour market. Rural counties also supplied, on average, higher skilled online work than urban areas did. However, many of the most deprived regions of the country did not participate in the online labour market at all. Our findings highlight the potentials and limitations of such platforms for regional economic development.

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Cities, Tasks, and Skills

Cited by 24 publications

References 79 publications

Small cities face greater impact from automation

Small cities face greater impact from automation

Polarization and the growth of low‐skill service jobs in Spanish local labor markets

ICTs and the Urban-Rural Divide: Can Online Labour Platforms Bridge the Gap?

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