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Automation After the Assembly Line: Computerized Machine Tools, Employment and Productivity in the United States
Leah Boustan, Professor of Economics, Princeton University
Abstract: Since the 1970s, computerized machine tools have been replacing semi-skilled manufacturing workers, contributing to factory automation. We build a novel measure of exposure to computer numerical control (CNC) based on initial variation in tool types across industries and differential shifts toward CNC technology by tool type over time. Industries more exposed to CNC increased capital investment and experienced higher labor productivity. Total employment rose, with gains for college-educated workers and abstract tasks compensating for losses of less-educated workers and routine tasks. Employment gains were strongest for unionized jobs. Workers in exposed industries returned to school and relevant degree programs expanded.
Leah Boustan is a Professor of Economics at Princeton University, where she also serves as the Director of the Industrial Relations Section. Her research lies at the intersection between economic history and labor economics. Her first book, Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets (Princeton University Press, 2016) examines the effect of the Great Black Migration from the rural south during and after World War II. Her recent work, including her new book Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success (PublicAffairs 2022), is on the mass migration from Europe to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Professor Boustan is co-director of the Development of the American Economy Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She also serves as co-editor at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Professor Boustan was named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 2012 and won the IZA Young Labor Economists Award in 2019.
