--- title: "Robots and Non-Participation in the United States: Where Have All the Workers Gone? · AI Fault Line" url: https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-1177-00197939251373051/ description: "AI Fault Line is a neutral, evidence-cited field guide to why experts looking at the same developments disagree about AI's effect on productivity, jobs, inequality, regulation and the pace of change." --- [Research](https://aifaultline.com/research/) # Robots and Non-Participation in the United States: Where Have All the Workers Gone? Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Benjamin Lerch · Industrial and Labor Relations Review · 25 Sep 2025 [Read original source](https://doi.org/10.1177/00197939251373051) Open access Where this sits in the debate - [Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/jobs/) Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model ([AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)). ## Abstract The rapid advances in automation technologies are disrupting labor markets at an unprecedented speed, contributing to the secular decline in US labor force participation and raising questions about where workers shift to when they leave the labor force. This article investigates the margins of adjustment of workers after being displaced by the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting exogenous variation in the adoption of robots across local labor markets over time, the authors show that almost 8% of non-participants respond by enrolling in college, approximately 10% claim disability benefits, and nearly 40% retire early. The remaining non-participants rely on the income of their household members or live off their savings. These margins differ with the sociodemographic characteristics of individuals. Results also show that robots have worsened non-participants’ health, including self-reported health problems and hospitalizations related to severe mental disorders and substance abuse. ## 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](https://aifaultline.com/about/#source-ranking). Published 2025 (13 months ago) Citations 4 (OpenAlex) ## Citations in context [Chart: 4 citations, cohort median 10] 4 citations — 42nd 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. [Chart: published 2025] □ added to this collection in 2026. ## More on this topic Related by theme, not necessarily by method or conclusion. - [The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-2139-ssrn-4945566/) SSRN · 2024 - [GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-48550-arxiv-2303-10130/) arXiv · 2023 - [Extending “GPTs Are GPTs” to Firms](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-1257-pandp-20251045/) AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2025 - [New Frontiers: The Origins and Content of New Work, 1940–2018](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-1093-qje-qjae008/) The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2024 Overview assembled automatically from collected metadata. [How this site is built](https://aifaultline.com/about/).