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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18881
August 2026
Labor-Market Adjustment to Technological Change: The Role of Occupational Accessibility

Technological change requires workers to reallocate across occupations, but it may also reshape how easily they can do so by changing occupational skill requirements. We exploit digitalization during the 2010s to study this mechanism. We measure occupational accessibility by comparing occupational skill requirements in job-posting data. Combining these measures with French matched employer–employee data, we find that occupations becoming more similar in their digital skill profiles experience greater worker mobility. Counterfactual simulations based on a structural two-sided matching model indicate that changes in occupational accessibility generate worker reallocation amounting to 21 percent of that generated by observed labor-demand shifts.

Kommunikation
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer-ext@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Netzwerkkoordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

Über das IZA@LISER Network
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