Testing the Automation Revolution Hypothesis

This is a short paper where the authors try to understand what predicts automation of jobs, and if there is an automation revolution ongoing or in the near future that will causes large-scale displacement of jobs.

The conclusion is that there probably isn't an automation revolution currently ongoing or scheduled for the near future:

None of these results seem to offer much support for claims that we are in the midst of a trend-deviating revolution in levels of job automation, related job losses, or in the factors that predict job automation. If such a revolution has begun, it has not yet noticeably influenced this sort of data, though continued tracking of such data may later reveal such a revolution. Our results also offer little support for claims that a trend-deviating increase in automation would be accompanied by large net declines in pay or employment. Instead, we estimate that more automation mainly predicts weaker demand, relative to supply, fluctuations in labor markets.

The datasets used to make the case are quite small (~1500 data points) and cover a small time period (1999-2019) so I'm not sure the results are a good predictor of the future impact of automation to the job market.

Besides, I'd argue we're really interested in mitigating a low probability but very high cost risk here – if there is a 10% chance of an automation revolution that displaces 20% of the workforce within 1-2 decades, then it's a risk worth taking very seriously. Such a risk is unlikely to be revealed by models built using the few thousand data points collected over two decades that the study relies on.