Automation of employment in the presence of industry 4.0: The case of Mexico

Abstract

The automation and digitization of interconnected production processes have changed the labor demand by boosting the creation and destruction of occupations. In the context of the I4.0, this paper analyzes the relationship between automation risk, labor demand and sociodemographic characteristics for the Mexican occupations. Hence, we estimate a multinomial logit model by considering the dataset of the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE), from the first quarter of 2013–2018. We find that changes in labor demand due to automation depend on the automation risk probability, and sociodemographic and labor characteristics. As it is the case in other countries, we find that labor demand increases for those occupations with low-risk of automation that require high-skilled workers. However, surprisingly, the direction of labor demand is inverse in the characteristics of gender, age, and education.