Abstract
The authors study the effects on work of additive manufacturing (AM), an emerging technology that may replace significant segments of traditional manufacturing (TM). Compared to TM, AM is more integrated and offers greater flexibility in design, materials, and customizability; thus, it should entail more demanding tasks and higher skill levels. The authors analyze vacancies for AM and TM workers, focusing on plants that posted vacancies in both technologies to control for factors that may affect the content of job postings. Findings show that AM jobs are more complex (with more non-routine analytic and less routine cognitive content) in comparison to TM jobs, and AM jobs require more high-level technical skills and more reasoning skills. The relative differences are larger for lower-skill workers (operators) than for high-skill workers (engineers). The authors conclude that AM is an upskilling technology that is skill biased in favor of low-skill workers and therefore reduces the skill gap.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 255-289 |
| Number of pages | 35 |
| Journal | ILR Review |
| Volume | 76 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We acknowledge financial support from the Russell Sage Foundation’s Future of Work program grant G-1811-1029 to Ben-Ner and Urtasun. We received helpful comments from Dennis Ahlburg, Marco Barrenechea, Alan Benson, John Budd, Gordon Burtch, William Durfee, Saul Estrin, Richard Freeman, Teresa García Marco, Alberto Labarga, Patrick McGovern, Federico Sciammarella, Aaron Sojourner, and Ruitao Su. We are thankful to Moshe Aknin of Stratasys, Dr. Rich Baker of ProtoLabs, Jennifer Maslar and Christopher Schuppe of GE Additive, and Dr. Cecilia Ortiz Duenas of Delta Airlines for their professional insights into the workings of additive and traditional manufacturing. We also thank participants at presentations at London School of Economics, Public University of Navarra, University of Minnesota, Industry Studies Association meeting, Labor and Employment Relations Association meetings, Society of Institutional and Organizational Economics meetings, European Groups for Organizational Studies, European Academy of Management meeting, and Annual IZA/World Bank/NJD/UNU-WIDER Jobs and Development Conference. Expert research assistance was provided by Adrianto, YoonJin Choi, Fang Hu, Changye Li, Bruna Moreno, and Zitao Shen.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
Keywords
- additive manufacturing
- job complexity
- skill change
- technological change
- vacancy postings
