Technological Complementarity: the Division of Know-how and the Future of Work

Joint work with Jae Hyuk Park, Frank Neffke, and Hyejin Youn.

By applying bundles of technologies, workers put the embedded knowledge of a diversity of human experts to use. Here, we examine the relationship between such bundles of technologies used by human labor. To do so, we measure complementarity between technologies which can explain part of wages unexplained by other factors.

The figure shows a Two-mode network between occupations and tools/technologies utilized by occupations in 2019. The size of the node represents the degree of nodes: the number of unique occupations using a target tool or technology, for tool and technology nodes, and the number of unique tools and technology that a target occupation uses for occupation nodes. Visualization prepared by Jae Hyuk Park.