In this paper we analyse changes in the task content of jobs in Poland between 1996 and 2014. We follow the Autor, Levy & Murnane (2003) and Acemoglu and Autor (2011) approach using the O*NET 2003 and 2014 data and Polish LFS at 4-digit occupation classification level. We find increasing intensity of both non-routine and routine cognitive tasks, and decreasing intensity of both routine and non-routine manual tasks, mainly due to between-occupation shifts in employment structure. The cohorts born after 1970 underwent large shifts in the task intensity structure and contributed most to the overall changes in task contents, while almost no adjustments occurred in cohorts born before 1970. The growth of non-routine cognitive tasks among workers born after the 1970 was largely driven by the tertiary education boom in Poland, although in some cohorts rising supply of tertiary graduates was accompanied by a relative reduction of non-routine content of jobs.
We thank participants of the “10th IZA/World Bank Conference on Employment and Development: Technological Change and Jobs” conference in Bonn for insightful comments. This paper was financially supported by the Network for Jobs and Development initiative under the auspices of the World Bank. Usual disclaimers apply. All errors are ours.
Institute for Structural Research (IBS), Faculty of Economic Sciences and Digital Economy Lab (DELab), University of Warsaw