Cities, technological change and labor markets – CiTeLab

We study the economic organization of French agglomerations and changes in labor markets in cities. We document new facts about the allocation of economic activity across and within cities of different sizes that we frame within newly developed spatial economic models and urban theory. Technological and economic changes over the last 50 years led to transformations of labor markets and a profound decoupling of agglomerating forces across and within cities. Consequently, this results in the remaking of systems of cities and within-city structure. There is an increasing segregation of jobs, incomes and housing across and within large cities. Small cities, in contrast, become relatively less skilled and their historical centers suffer job losses, also in services. Powerful forces responsible for these developments include inter alia ongoing labor market polarization and changes in the internal organization of firms, driven by automation, offshoring, ICT and digitalization of services. There are 4 work packages: i) Documenting and rationalizing labor market polarization across French cities; ii) Characterizing the development of job clusters with urbanization and localization economies in large cities and the resulting within-city spatial inequality; iii) Understanding the impact of digital commerce on within-city structure across cities of different sizes; iv) Investigating the interplay of firm organization, location and local labor markets. Increased adoption and furthering of automation, new ICT technologies and service digitalization following the COVID-19 pandemic may intensify the studied processes within the next years e.g. through teleworking.