Broadband internet access improves the labor market outcomes and productivity of skilled workers but worsens that of unskilled workers, according to a study by Anders Akerman at Stockholm University and Ingvil Gaarder and Magne Mogstad at the University of Chicago. Analyzing several Norwegian data sets, they found that a 10-percentage-point increase in broadband availability in a municipality raises wages of skilled workers in that market by about 0.2%; by comparison, it leads to a decline in wages of low-skilled individuals but has no significant change on their employment rate. The evidence suggests that broadband adoption in firms both complements skilled workers in executing nonroutine abstract tasks and substitutes for unskilled workers in performing routine tasks, say the researchers.
Source: The Skill Complementarity of Broadband Internet
