Automation risk and subjective wellbeing in the UK

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

January 18, 2024

Summary:

The personal well-being of workers may be influenced by the risk of job automation brought about by technological innovation. Here we use data from the Understanding Society survey in the UK and a fixed-effects model to examine associations between working in a highly automatable job and life and job satisfaction. We find that employees in highly automatable jobs report significantly lower job satisfaction, a result that holds across demographic groups categorised by gender, age and education, with higher negative association among men, higher degree holders and younger workers. On the other hand, life satisfaction of workers is not generally associated with the risk of job automation, a result that persists among groups disaggregated by gender and education, but with age differences, since the life satisfaction of workers aged 30 to 49 is negatively associated with job automation risk. Our analysis also reveals differences in these associations across UK industries and regions.

Published in

medRxiv

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.18.24301484

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

#568090

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest