IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/oruesi/2023_012.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Artificial Intelligence, Tasks, Skills and Wages: Worker-Level Evidence from Germany

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper documents novel facts on within-occupation task and skill changes over the past two decades in Germany. In a second step, it reveals a distinct relationship between occupational work content and exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (robots). Workers in occupations with high AI exposure, perform different activities and face different skill requirements, compared to workers in occupations exposed to robots. In a third step, the study uses individual labour market biographies to investigate the impact on wages between 2010 and 2017. Results indicate a wage growth premium in occupations more exposed to AI, contrasting with a wage growth discount in occupations exposed to robots. Finally, the study further explores the dynamic influence of AI exposure on individual wages over time, uncovering positive associations with wages, with nuanced variations across occupational groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Engberg, Erik & Koch, Michael & Lodefalk, Magnus & Schroeder, Sarah, 2023. "Artificial Intelligence, Tasks, Skills and Wages: Worker-Level Evidence from Germany," Working Papers 2023:12, Örebro University, School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:oruesi:2023_012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.oru.se/globalassets/oru-sv/institutioner/hh/workingpapers/workingpapers2023/wp-12-2023.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Engberg, Erik & Görg, Holger & Lodefalk, Magnus & Javed, Farrukh & Längkvist, Martin & Monteiro, Natália & Kyvik Nordås, Hildegunn & Pulito, Giuseppe & Schroeder, Sarah & Tang, Aili, 2023. "AI Unboxed and Jobs: A Novel Measure and Firm-Level Evidence from Three Countries," Ratio Working Papers 370, The Ratio Institute.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 1998. "Why Do Firms Train? Theory and Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(1), pages 79-119.
    3. Domini, Giacomo & Grazzi, Marco & Moschella, Daniele & Treibich, Tania, 2022. "For whom the bell tolls: The firm-level effects of automation on wage and gender inequality," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(7).
    4. Julieta Caunedo & Elisa Keller & Yongseok Shin, 2023. "Technology and the Task Content of Jobs across the Development Spectrum," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 37(3), pages 479-493.
    5. David Card & Jörg Heining & Patrick Kline, 2013. "Workplace Heterogeneity and the Rise of West German Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(3), pages 967-1015.
    6. Dauth, Wolfgang & Eppelsheimer, Johann, 2020. "Preparing the sample of integrated labour market biographies (SIAB) for scientific analysis," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 54(1), pages 1-10.
    7. Sascha O. Becker & Marc-Andreas Muendler, 2015. "Trade and tasks: an exploration over three decades in Germany," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 30(84), pages 589-641.
    8. Daron Acemoglu & David Autor & Jonathon Hazell & Pascual Restrepo, 2022. "Artificial Intelligence and Jobs: Evidence from Online Vacancies," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 40(S1), pages 293-340.
    9. Consoli, Davide & Marin, Giovanni & Rentocchini, Francesco & Vona, Francesco, 2023. "Routinization, within-occupation task changes and long-run employment dynamics," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    10. Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo, 2019. "Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(2), pages 3-30, Spring.
    11. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1279-1333.
    12. John M. Abowd & Francis Kramarz & David N. Margolis, 1999. "High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 251-334, March.
    13. Daron Acemoglu & Gary Anderson & David Beede & Catherine Buffington & Eric Childress & Emin Dinlersoz & Lucia Foster & Nathan Goldschlag & John Haltiwanger & Zachary Kroff & Pascual Restrepo & Nikolas, 2023. "Advanced Technology Adoption: Selection or Causal Effects?," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 113, pages 210-214, May.
    14. Edward Felten & Manav Raj & Robert Seamans, 2021. "Occupational, industry, and geographic exposure to artificial intelligence: A novel dataset and its potential uses," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(12), pages 2195-2217, December.
    15. Fatun Martin & Pazour Michal, 2021. "Modelling the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the labour market in Czechia," Central European Journal of Public Policy, Sciendo, vol. 15(2), pages 31-42, December.
    16. Alessandra Bonfiglioli & Rosario Crinò & Gino Gancia & Ioannis Papadakis, 2025. "Artificial intelligence and jobs: evidence from US commuting zones," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 40(121), pages 145-194.
    17. Christina Gathmann & Uta Schönberg, 2010. "How General Is Human Capital? A Task-Based Approach," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 1-49, January.
    18. Erik Brynjolfsson & Danielle Li & Lindsey Raymond, 2025. "Generative AI at Work," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 140(2), pages 889-942.
    19. Marguerita Lane & Anne Saint-Martin, 2021. "The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the labour market: What do we know so far?," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 256, OECD Publishing.
    20. Morgan R. Frank & David Autor & James E. Bessen & Erik Brynjolfsson & Manuel Cebrian & David J. Deming & Maryann Feldman & Matthew Groh & José Lobo & Esteban Moro & Dashun Wang & Hyejin Youn & Iyad Ra, 2019. "Toward understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(14), pages 6531-6539, April.
    21. Alekseeva, Liudmila & Azar, José & Giné, Mireia & Samila, Sampsa & Taska, Bledi, 2021. "The demand for AI skills in the labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    22. Acemoglu, Daron & Autor, David, 2011. "Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 12, pages 1043-1171, Elsevier.
    23. repec:iab:iabjlr:v:54:i:1:p:art.10 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Michael J. Handel, 2012. "Trends in Job Skill Demands in OECD Countries," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 143, OECD Publishing.
    25. Edward W. Felten & Manav Raj & Robert Seamans, 2018. "A Method to Link Advances in Artificial Intelligence to Occupational Abilities," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 54-57, May.
    26. Alexandra Spitz-Oener, 2006. "Technical Change, Job Tasks, and Rising Educational Demands: Looking outside the Wage Structure," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 235-270, April.
    27. Audretsch, David B. & Kritikos, Alexander S. & Schiersch, Alexander, 2020. "Microfirms and innovation in the service sector," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 997-1018.
    28. Oliver Giering & Alexandra Fedorets & Jule Adriaans & Stefan Kirchner, 2021. "Künstliche Intelligenz in Deutschland: Erwerbstätige wissen oft nicht, dass sie mit KI-basierten Systemen arbeiten," DIW Wochenbericht, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 88(48), pages 783-789.
    29. Barth, Erling & Roed, Marianne & Schone, Pal & Umblijs, Janis, 2020. "How Robots Change Within-Firm Wage Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 13605, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    30. Wolfgang Dauth & Johann Eppelsheimer, 2020. "Preparing the sample of integrated labour market biographies (SIAB) for scientific analysis: a guide," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 54(1), pages 1-14, December.
    31. Robert Seamans & Manav Raj, 2018. "AI, Labor, Productivity and the Need for Firm-Level Data," NBER Working Papers 24239, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    32. David Silver & Aja Huang & Chris J. Maddison & Arthur Guez & Laurent Sifre & George van den Driessche & Julian Schrittwieser & Ioannis Antonoglou & Veda Panneershelvam & Marc Lanctot & Sander Dieleman, 2016. "Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search," Nature, Nature, vol. 529(7587), pages 484-489, January.
    33. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue nov.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dragan Filimonovic & Christian Rutzer & Conny Wunsch, 2025. "Can GenAI Improve Academic Performance? Evidence from the Social and Behavioral Sciences," Papers 2510.02408, arXiv.org.
    2. Jin Kim & Shane Schweitzer & Christoph Riedl & David De Cremer, 2025. "The AI Penalization Effect: People Reduce Compensation for Workers Who Use AI," Papers 2501.13228, arXiv.org, revised May 2025.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Koch, Michael & Lodefalk, Magnus, 2024. "Artificial Intelligence and Worker Stress: Evidence from Germany," Ratio Working Papers 377, The Ratio Institute.
    2. Böhm, Michael Johannes & Etheridge, Ben & Irastorza-Fadrique, Aitor, 2025. "The Impact of Labour Demand Shocks when Occupational Labour Supplies are Heterogeneous," IZA Discussion Papers 17851, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Christina Gathmann & Felix Grimm & Erwin Winkler, 2024. "AI, Task Changes in Jobs, and Worker Reallocation," CESifo Working Paper Series 11585, CESifo.
    4. Michael J. Böhm & Ben Etheridge & Aitor Irastorza-Fadrique, 2025. "The impact of labour demand shocks when occupational labour supplies are heterogeneous," IFS Working Papers W25/15, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    5. Bachmann, Ronald & Demir, Gökay & Green, Colin & Uhlendorff, Arne, 2022. "The Role of Within-Occupation Task Change in Wage Development," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264113, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Freund, L. B., 2022. "Superstar Teams," Janeway Institute Working Papers 2235, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    7. Winkler, Erwin, 2020. "Diverging paths: Labor reallocation, sorting, and wage inequality," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224535, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Michael J. Böhm & Hans-Martin von Gaudecker & Felix Schran, 2024. "Occupation Growth, Skill Prices, and Wage Inequality," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 201-243.
    9. Salomons, Anna & vom Baur, Cäcilia & Zierahn-Weilage, Ulrich, 2025. "Expertise at Work: New Technologies, New Skills, and Worker Impacts," IZA Discussion Papers 18248, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Egger, Hartmut & Kreickemeier, Udo & Moser, Christoph & Wrona, Jens, 2024. "Offshoring and job polarisation between firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    11. Guarascio, Dario & Reljic, Jelena & Stöllinger, Roman, 2025. "Diverging paths: AI exposure and employment across European regions," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 11-24.
    12. Arntz, Melanie & Genz, Sabrina & Gregory, Terry & Lehmer, Florian & Zierahn-Weilage, Ulrich, 2024. "De-Routinization in the Fourth Industrial Revolution - Firm-Level Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 16740, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Stefania Albanesi & António Dias da Silva & Juan F Jimeno & Ana Lamo & Alena Wabitsch, 2025. "New technologies and jobs in Europe," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 40(121), pages 71-139.
    14. Luca Fontanelli & Flavio Calvino & Chiara Criscuolo & Lionel Nesta & Elena Verdolini, 2024. "The role of human capital for AI adoption: Evidence from French firms," Post-Print hal-05029748, HAL.
    15. Lipowski, Cäcilia & Salomons, Anna & Zierahn-Weilage, Ulrich, 2024. "Expertise at work: New technologies, new skills, and worker impacts," ZEW Discussion Papers 24-044, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    16. Genz, Sabrina & Schnabel, Claus, 2021. "Digging into the Digital Divide: Workers' Exposure to Digitalization and Its Consequences for Individual Employment," IZA Discussion Papers 14649, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Lyu, Wenjing & Liu, Jin, 2021. "Artificial Intelligence and emerging digital technologies in the energy sector," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 303(C).
    18. Jean-Philippe Deranty & Thomas Corbin, 2022. "Artificial Intelligence and work: a critical review of recent research from the social sciences," Papers 2204.00419, arXiv.org.
    19. Emilio Colombo & Fabio Mercorio & Mario Mezzanzanica & Antonio Serino, 2024. "Towards the Terminator Economy: Assessing Job Exposure to AI through LLMs," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis2401, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    20. Katrin Huber & Geske Rolvering, 2023. "Public child care and mothers’ career trajectories," Working Papers 228, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:oruesi:2023_012. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ieoruse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.