Artificial intelligence, tasks, skills, and wages: Worker-level evidence from Germany
Erik Engberg, Michael R. Koch, Magnus Lodefalk, Sarah Schroeder · Research Policy · 8 Jul 2025
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Where this sits in the debate
- Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?
- Will AI widen inequality? · its finding: it depends (why studies differ)
Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model (AI-written).
Abstract
This paper examines how new technologies are linked to changes in the content of work and individual wages. As a first step, it documents novel facts on task and skill changes within occupations over the past two decades in Germany. We furthermore reveal a distinct relationship between ex-ante occupational work content and ex-post exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (robots). Workers in occupations with high AI exposure perform different activities and face different skill requirements compared to workers in occupations exposed to robots, suggesting that robots and AI are substitutes for different activities and skills. We also document that changes in the task and skill content of occupations is related to ex-ante exposure to technologies. Finally, the study uses individual labour market biographies to investigate the relationship between AI and wages. By exploring the dynamic influence of AI exposure on individuals over time, the study uncovers positive associations with wages, with nuanced variations across occupational groups, thereby shedding further light on the substitutability and augmentability of AI.
About this publication
Leading field journal. A leading journal in economics or a neighbouring field (on the Tinbergen Institute’s A list or near the top of the RePEc ranking), or a top-rated computer-science venue.
Placed by: Leading field journal. How sources are ranked.
- Published
- 2025 (16 months ago)
- Citations
- 33 (OpenAlex)
Citations in context
33 citations — 79th percentile among the 33 indexed papers from 2025 in this collection. Citation counts favor older papers; this compares only same-year papers here, not the whole literature.
□ added to this collection in 2026.
author affiliation matches seed institution aarhus university — part of why this paper is in the collection.
Related by theme, not necessarily by method or conclusion.
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