The great challenge for local labour markets. Lovely and lousy jobs in the digital era

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital platforms represent the great challenge for advanced economies in modern times, especially because of their transformative effects on labour markets through the creation and/or displacement of jobs. At the local level, labour markets differ according to their mix of jobs and occupations positively ( lovely ) or negatively ( lousy ) associated with the use of AI and digital platforms, being thus more or less resilient to their diffusion. Going beyond a mere indicator of labour market exposure to digital technologies and focusing on Italian NUTS3 regions in the period 2016-2024, the paper aims to classify occupations into lovely or lousy ones, and to propose a taxonomy of labour market transformations based on the mix of lovely and lousy jobs in each region. While presenting an overall picture of deep evolution in labour markets, one of the most important results of this work is that it mitigates concerns about widespread disruptive effects, with several regions being able to contain job losses despite the high diffusion of AI and platforms.