This dissertation comprises three autonomous essays on topics in labor economics. The first chapter investigates the impact of socio-cultural, technological, and other transformative factors on employees' labor market decisions over recent decades, focusing specifically on the mobility of young workers in terms of job and occupation transitions. Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) indicate a marked increase in job mobility among young participants across different cohorts. Analysis of these datasets demonstrates that the influence of age on the likelihood of changing jobs has become more negative for the second cohort. This shift is primarily driven by changes in the impact of age for specific socio-demographic groups of respondents. Additionally, there is a notable between-cohort rise in the relationship between both upward and downward job transitions and occupational mobility.
The second essay explores the consequences of the rise in industrial robot installations on shifts in population size and employment within local labor markets, which may be substantially affected by the rapid advancement of robotics technology in recent decades. The cross-sectional study reveals discernible gender disparities in the impacts of robot adoption. The effect of robotization on the labor force participation rate is negative for men and unmarried women yet positive for married women. As industrial robots are predominantly programmed to perform routine tasks in manufacturing industries traditionally associated with heavy manual male-dominated labor, the anticipated impact of robot exposure on employment in the manufacturing sector is predictably negative for male workers. For women, this effect is conversely positive. It was also found that robot penetration leads to an increase in the share of family income attributed to females within married-couple households.
The extended cross-sectional analysis in the third chapter indicates that the impact of robotization on local labor markets is more negative for younger people. Fixed-effects models using panel data analysis reveal that robot adoption unexpectedly reduces migration but enhances labor force participation, opposing recent scholarly findings. Employing an alternative robot adoption variable that is based on technology adoption within individual industries and, therefore, can only be utilized to analyze employment-related dependent variables yields more robust and statistically significant results, indicating a negative impact of robot exposure on employment. Nevertheless, panel data analysis does not support the previous chapter's findings regarding gender differences in the impact of robot penetration. These discrepancies may be attributed to differences in the structure, methodology, and nature of cross-sectional versus panel data and the methodological differences in measuring robotization. / Doctor of Philosophy / This work consists of three separate essays on labor economics. The first chapter looks at how cultural, technological, and other big changes have affected people's job choices over the past few decades. Data from two surveys of young people show that young workers are changing jobs more often now. Age is found to have a bigger negative effect on job changes for the younger cohort. This change mainly affects specific socio-demographic groups. There is also a stronger link between moving up or down in jobs and changing occupations.
The second essay examines how the increase in the use of industrial robots affects the population and employment in local labor markets. The study finds that robots affect men and unmarried women negatively but have a positive impact on married women. Since robots usually do routine tasks in manufacturing, which is a male-dominated field, this hurts male workers' job prospects but helps women. Robots also lead to a higher share of family income coming from women in married households.
The third chapter shows that robots impact younger people in local job markets more negatively. Using different data, it is found that robots surprisingly reduce migration but increase labor force participation. This finding is different from those of other studies. A new way of measuring robot use within specific industries shows that robots negatively affect employment. However, this new analysis does not support the earlier findings about gender differences. These differences may come from how data is collected and analyzed and the methods used to measure robot use.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/120864 |
| Date | 06 August 2024 |
| Creators | Nurmukhametov, Azat |
| Contributors | Economics, Science, Ge, Suqin, Miller, Melinda, Chen, Susan Elizabeth, Lin, Xu |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds