Advancing technology changes skill demands: for human expertise to remain valuable in the labor market, skill supply must adjust. We study how new digital technology reshapes vocational training and skill acquisition, and the resulting impacts on workers' careers. We construct a novel database of legally binding training curricula spanning the near universe of vocational training in Germany over five decades, and link curriculum updates to breakthrough technologies using Natural Language Processing techniques. Our findings reveal that technological advances drive training updates, with curricula increasingly incorporating digital and social skills while reducing routine-intensive task content, mostly through new skill emergence. Using administrative employer-employee data, we show that educational updates help workers adapt to new skill demands, and earn higher wages compared to workers with outdated skills. By contrast, older occupational incumbents face declining wages, consistent with skill obsolescence. These worker impacts are accompanied by firms increasing capital investments when exposed to workers with updated skills. Our findings highlight the role of changes in within-occupational skill supply in meeting evolving labor market demands for non-college educated workers.
Joint with Cäcilia Lipowski and Anna Salomons
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Link to the paper here:
This event is in collaboration with SkiLMeeT. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 101132581.
