Afraid of Automation? Choose Your Training Carefully

Abstract

Due to the impact of automation on the labour market, publicly funded training programmes have gained increased attention. This paper explores a training programme provided to job seekers in Slovakia, the OECD country with the highest average risk of automation. The scheme allows job seekers to choose their training specialisation. In addition to the existing literature, we evaluate the most popular training specialisations chosen by job seekers, which are divided by gender. Training specilisations for healthcare workers, beauticians and accountants are predominantly chosen by female job seekers, while the most popular specialisations among males are welders, drivers, and security guards. Our findings suggest that job seekers, when allowed to select their specialisations, use training to reduce their risk of automation.

Keywords: active labour market policy, risk of automation, double machine learning