Industry 4.0 and the Consequences for the Labor Market and Economy

This study conducted by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and the Institute of Economic Structures Research (GWS) focuses on the economic effects of the phenomenon of 'industry 4.0', the digitalisation of the production processes.

These developments involve considerable challenges at enterprise and political level. The five-step scenario analysis begins with the impacts of increased investments of enterprises in equipment (1) and of the state in the network infrastructure (2) on the overall economy and the labour market. On this basis we further model the consequent personnel and material costs of the enterprises (3) and a changed pattern of demand for occupations and skills (4). The cumulative effects of these four partial scenarios are compared with a baseline scenario which contains no advanced development path to industry 4.0. In a further scenario the effects on the labour market of a potentially increasing demand for goods (5) are taken into consideration and also contrasted with the baseline scenario.
The results show that industry 4.0 will accelerate the structural change towards more services. In this process labour force movements between branches and occupations are much larger than the change of the number of employees in total. The turnover on the labour market are accompanied by an increasing value added which is leading not only to more economic assets but also - due to higher requirements for the labour force - to higher aggregate wages.
The underlying assumptions have a positive effect on the economic development. But this also means that, given a delayed realization, the assumptions are turning against the business location Germany: We will export less and demand more 'new' goods from abroad.
In order to improve the economic findings on the effects of digitization, a further development of QUBE-I4.0-project is planned." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

 

Free download in German: http://doku.iab.de/forschungsbericht/2015/fb0815.pdf (de)