A new representative company inquiry carried out by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg in cooperation with the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, for the first time, provides deeper insights into the connection between investments into technologies in Economy 4.0 and the development of employment in the companies.
In their initial results, the authors demonstrate that investments in digital technologies in recent years neither led to massive job losses nor to significant profit. Positive impacts were found amongst employees who carry out highly complex skilled activities in technology-oriented companies in information and communication technology (ICT) but also in services that had not been knowledge-intensive until now. Losses tend to emerge as being most likely for employees that carry out auxiliary activities in non-knowledge-intensive services. These statements about tendencies cannot, however, be automatically transferred to other economic areas.
You can access the report on »Effects of digitisation on employment development in Germany« here.
