Observational study reveals slower employment growth from digitalization in Spanish production systems, indicating that local absorptive capacity mitigates job displacement.
Key Points
To examine why local employment responses to digitalization vary across geographic areas and evaluate the moderating role of local absorptive capacity.
Analyzed longitudinal data from 494 Spanish Local Production Systems covering the period between 2011 and 2021.
Evaluated differences in exposure to traditional versus emerging digital technologies alongside local human capital metrics, specifically tertiary education levels.
Greater exposure to digitalization correlated with slower growth in the local employment-to-population ratio across production systems.
Adverse employment effects were concentrated in regions with lower tertiary education levels, attenuated as human capital rose, and disappeared beyond a critical educational threshold.
Emerging digital technologies induced stronger negative employment effects and required higher levels of absorptive capacity than traditional digital technologies.