Is Fear of Robots Stealing Jobs Haunting European Workers? A Multilevel Study of Automation Insecurity in the EU

Abstract

The paper examines how workers in the EU perceive impact of technological changes on employment and whether they experience automation insecurity, or fear of robots stealing their jobs. In particular, the paper seeks to determine whether subjectively perceived automation insecurity reflects workers’ vulnerability and exposure to objective automation risk. The paper analyzes representative survey data from Eurobarometer for all 28 EU member countries and uses multilevel logistic regression models to model workers’ probability of automation insecurity as a function of their individual characteristics, contextual characteristics of countries they live in and as of possible interactions between the two. The results show that European workers are greatly concerned with labor-substituting effects of new technologies, and that this subjective insecurity to a great extent reflects their vulnerability and exposure to objective automation risk.