Frontier Technology Adopters and the Aggregate Decline of Routine Jobs

This paper highlights the nuanced relationship between firms' technology adoption and the employment structure of the economy. Leveraging a novel firm survey that we link to German administrative employment records, we categorize firms based on their technology adoption status. We find that frontier technology adopters significantly contribute to the economy-wide decline in routine and rise of non-routine cognitive jobs, primarily through firms with complementary workforce skills. Our results suggest (1) a continued de-routinization with frontier technology adoption, (2) the importance of complementary skills for the decline of routine jobs, and (3) a fallacy of drawing economy-wide conclusions from within-firm workforce adjustments.