Abstract

Fears that machines could take people's jobs are currently being discussed in the media, politics and science. On the one hand, it is argued that digitisation will contribute to making jobs redundant, as employment can increasingly be substituted by computers or robots. On the other hand, however, digit-isation can also offer opportunities, e.g., by creating new jobs. Thus, employees do not necessarily have to see their own workplace threatened by technological progress. However, the empirical evidence on individual job worries due to digitisation is currently scarce. Our study starts with this research gap and examines whether and to what extent employees in Germany are afraid of losing their own jobs, de-pending on the degree of digitisation of their jobs. We distinguish between cognitive (i.e. the individual assessment of job loss probability) and affective job insecurity (i.e. the extent to which an individual worries about losing their job). The analysis is based on the Labour Market and Social Security Panel (PASS) for employees subject to social contributions for the years 2013 to 2016. Digitisation is opera-tionalised via the occupation-specific substitution potential, i.e. the extent to which occupational tasks can already be replaced by computers or computer-controlled machines today. Using multivariate panel analysis methods, we investigate whether there is a relationship between the degree of digitisation and the fear of job loss. The analysis provides first indications that digitisation could have a negative impact on affective job insecurity.