Automation and employment in uruguay

Abstract

The debate surrounding the impacts of automation on employment has become increasingly relevant in recent years. However, the growing empirical evidence has been largely focused on developed countries. The purpose of this article is to identify, based on quantitative and qualitative exercises, the relative changes in occupations and types of tasks that could be consistent with an automation process in the Uruguayan retail sector. This is significant because it is a non-tradable sector that requires mainly low-skilled workers in a middle-income country. A task content displacement effect is observed, to the detriment of workers with low educational levels and non-routine manual tasks, in favor mostly of cognitive-routine ones. These results are useful for the design of vocational training policies.