Job polarisation in the Italian labour market

This paper investigates ICT-driven polarisation of occupations and wages in the Italian labour market. Contrary to most contributes in the literature the cognitive content of occupations is assessed by associating to each job an index that assesses the frequency of relational and analytical tasks rather than by opposing the orthogonal concepts of manual and abstract tasks. In addition, the intensity of cognitive tasks and the frequency of routine tasks are measures based on in-field surveys rather than on standard manuals for occupations classification. The outcomes of the empirical analysis do not support the hypothesis of a significant shift of occupation in favour of less routine jobs. Nevertheless, between 2004 and 2015 some signals exist of a wage polarisation that penalises occupations with high frequency of both routine tasks and cognitive tasks. In 2015 the use of ICT at the workplace significantly and positively moderate the economic return to the intensity of abstract tasks. ICT use is also a significant but negative moderator of the economic return to the frequency of routine tasks.