Innovation and the labor market: theory, evidence, and challenges

Abstract This paper deals with the complex relationship between innovation and the labor market, analyzing the impact of new technological advancements on overall employment, skills, and wages. After a critical review of the extant literature and the available empirical studies, novel evidence is presented on the distribution of labor-saving automation [namely robotics and artificial intelligence (AI)], based on natural language processing of US patents. This mapping shows that both upstream high-tech providers and downstream users of new technologies—such as Boeing and Amazon—lead the underlying innovative effort.