Digitalisation of jobs and gender-age segregation in digital tasks: cross-country evidence based on ESJS2 data

This paper addresses the disproportional effects of digitalisation across age by investigating: (i) within-job age segregation in tasks by digital intensity; (ii) within-job age disparities in digital upskilling; (iii) age inequalities in wage returns to digital job tasks; and (iv) the role of gender in this age segregation and inequalities. The analysis is based on data of Cedefop’s second wave of the European Skills and Jobs Survey (ESJS2), conducted in 2021. First results of the analysis show that even when controlling for occupation-industry job pairs apart from using other explanatory variables, age segregation and gender gaps are prevalent in the case of digital skill intensity of tasks performed in the jobs of employees, though not in the case of digital upskilling via training measures. Applying the same appropriate controls, we also find that higher within-job digital skill intensity is associated with higher hourly wages. Gender wage gaps are sizeable across all skill intensity categories in addition to widening in older age groups. In addition to multivariate regression models, the study employs inverse probability weighting (IPW) to estimate average treatment effects and to examine whether the main associations are robust to potential selection bias on observables.