Automation, Learning, and Career Dynamics

Authors

Hassan Afrouzi, Andres Blanco, Andrés Drenik, Erik Hurst

Posted to EERN: June 2, 2026

FEDERAL RESERVE RESEARCH: Atlanta

We study how an automating technology affects career dynamics, human capital, and welfare in an economy where workers acquire skill through the tasks they perform. In a continuous-time general equilibrium model, learning-by-doing is determined jointly with the share of tasks automated, the frontier of tasks managers maintain, and the worker-to-manager career transition. Economies with high learning capacity admit pairs of stationary equilibria strictly ranked by the aggregate learning rate. Cheaper technology has opposite effects across the two: in the high-learning equilibrium, it raises welfare through the learning channel itself; in the low-learning equilibrium, it tips the economy into a human-capital trap. The planner’s first-best combines a tax on automation profits with a subsidy on frontier-maintenance expenditures at a common rate.

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