Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/322128 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2025/19
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
Does labour-saving technological change pose a threat to European employment, and if so, to what extent? This study investigates the degree of employment exposure to labour-saving technological change across NUTS-2 regions in Europe. We construct a cross-walked metric between the SOC and ISCO classification systems to adapt the direct measure of occupational exposure developed by Montobbio et al. (2024) for the US economy and apply it to the European context. This methodology enables us to generate detailed insights into the exposure of European occupations by leveraging the similarity rankings between technological classifications in the USPTO (CPCs) and task descriptions. To evaluate the transmission from occupational exposure to employment outcomes, we utilise data from the European Structure of Earnings Survey (EU-SES), thereby constructing exposure indices at both sectoral and regional levels. Finally, we examine the industrial and geographical diffusion of labour-saving technological change in recent years and provide robust econometric evidence indicating that low-wage regions, as well as deindustrialising areas heavily integrated into global value chains, are disproportionately vulnerable to the threat of substitution.
Subjects: 
regional disparities
manufacturing downgrading
automation
global value chains
JEL: 
O33
R10
O14
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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