Threats and opportunities in the digital era: Automation spikes and employment dynamics

• We investigate the change in worker flows within firms around an investment automation-intensive goods. identify ”automation spikes” using imports of capital goods embedding automation technologies. find that spikes are linked to increase firms’ net employment growth rate. The is explained by a higher hiring and lower separation. Workforce composition does not appear significantly following automation. This paper investigates (i.e. growth, but also separation rates) and, firms, across occupational categories. Resorting integrated dataset encompassing detailed information on their imports, employer-employee data for French manufacturing employers over period 2002–2015, we ‘automation spikes’ Even after controlling non-random selection into automation, contemporaneous rate, jointly rate Furthermore, associated with significant changes workforce (in terms 1-digit 2-digit categories, routine-intensive vs. non jobs).