Select Working Papers

Gonchar, Combemale and Krishnan. “Build It and They Will Come? US Regional Labor Composition and Readiness to Meet Skill Demand Shocks from CHIPS and Science”

Expansionary industrial policies, such as the CHIPS and Science Act, are followed with notable surges in labor demand within the industries they target. In the case of the CHIPS and Science Act, industries such as semiconductor manufacturing experienced significant influxes in financial investment, with $231 billion being committed to Semiconductors & Electronics thus far. Recognizing the imperative to address such labor demand shocks, we propose a novel operational methodology. This methodology, informed by economics, assesses potential supply-demand skill discrepancies, and incorporates factors such as the intertemporal occupational rates of transition and regional wage distributions. By analyzing the skill compositions inherent to industry-related occupations, our approach provides a strategic advantage to policymakers and industry stakeholders, enabling them to identify specific U.S. locales with the requisite skill profiles and potential wage structures. Furthermore, the practical application of our methodology is embodied in the Workforce Insights Tool, which offers comprehensive labor insights. To substantiate the efficacy of our approach, we consider the semiconductor manufacturing industry in the context of the CHIPS and Science Act as a representative case study, exploring diverse strategies for the construction of skill profiles for industry-related occupations.

Ales, Combemale, Fuchs and Whitefoot. “How It’s Made: A General Theory of the Labor Implications of Technological Change.”

This paper develops a general theory relating technology change and skill demand, capable of rationalizing the labor impacts of various technology changes since the 19th century. Performers (human or machine) face stochastic issues that must be solved in a given time to complete tasks. Firms choose how production tasks are divided into steps, the rate at which steps need to be completed, and the type of performer assigned to a step. Performers differ in the breadth of issues they can solve (generality) and in their tolerance for working at higher rates. Human performers tend to be generalists with low rate-tolerance. Machine performers tend to be specialists less sensitive to rate. Central to the theory are the cost of fragmenting tasks into smaller steps, the cost of allocating performers to multiple steps, and the negative relationship between step complexity and the rate of completing that step. We derive the cost-minimizing division of tasks and level of automation of production and the demand for workers of different skills that those conditions create. Our theory predicts that the division of tasks under increased complexity is skill polarizing; automation is skill polarizing at lower production volumes and upskilling at higher volumes; and that parts consolidation increases the demand for mid-level skills. We find counterparts to the theory across a range of industrial contexts and time periods, including the Hand-Machine Labor Study covering mechanization and process improvement at the end of the 19th century, automotive body assembly, and emerging technological changes in optoelectronic semiconductors used for communications.

Combemale and Whitefoot. “New Technology, New Hierarchy? Implications of Product and Process Innovations for the Division of Problem Solving.”

We measure how different technologies alter the structure of problem-solving and the division of labor across occupations, generating technological skill bias across occupations. We focus on automation versus consolidation of parts in the optoelectronic semiconductor industry as examples of innovations that change the inputs to production and the structure of production, respectively. We collect novel data from nine manufacturers in the optoelectronic semiconductor industry on skills, process structure, problem referrals to other occupations, and the distribution of production time per process step for lead operators, technicians, supervisors and engineers involved in more than 90 production steps, and engineers and managers involved in more than 100 process or product design activities. Firms divide problem solving across direct production workers, supervisors and managers and a body of staff (engineers, technicians) intervening “as-needed” with specific problem-solving expertise. Our early insights suggest that in cases of higher automation, skill heterogeneity increases for production supervision roles; in contrast, as designs become more consolidated (so that different strands of development must be more closely coordinated), designers and especially design managers must increase their breadth of skill.

Publications

Miles, Combemale and Karplus. Fall 2023. “When the Energy Transition Comes to Town.” Issues in Science and Technology.

Across the United States, closures of coal power plants have become increasingly common, largely in response to the favorable economics of natural gas and new environmental regulations. The local challenges of the energy transition have drawn attention at the national level. Already, the difficulty of navigating the energy transition without appropriate support is visible at citizen and stakeholder convenings in the southwest Pennsylvania region. In our activities as engineering and public policy researchers focused on hard-to-decarbonize industries such as coal, iron, and steel, we have seen community, union, and local government representatives pose questions for which there were no clear answers. As academics who are studying the energy transition in its earliest stages, we see that communities need better tools to inform decisions. But we also see that tools are only as effective as communities’ ability to understand and engage with them. At the same time, policymakers often don’t fully grasp the labor implications of investments in decarbonization technologies and infrastructure, such as creating regional hubs for new industries like hydrogen. Although researchers are beginning to recognize labor implications when evaluating energy solutions, there is a great and evolving need for better tools.

Combemale, Whitefoot, Ales, and Fuchs. August 2021. “Not all Technological Change is Equal: How the Separability of Tasks Mediates the Effect of Technological Change on Skill Demand.” Industrial and Corporate Change.

 We measure the labor-demand effects of two simultaneous forms of technological change—automation of production processes and consolidation of parts. We collect detailed shop-floor data from four semiconductor firms with different levels of automation and consolidation. Using the O*NET survey instrument, we collect novel task data for operator laborers that contains process-step level skill requirements, including operations and control, near vision, and dexterity requirements. We then use an engineering process model to separate the effects of the distinct technological changes on these process tasks and operator skill requirements. Within an occupation, we show that aggregate measures of technological change can mask the opposing skill biases of multiple simultaneous technological changes. In our empirical context, automation polarizes skill demand as routine, codifiable tasks requiring low and medium skills are executed by machines instead of humans, while the remaining and newly created human tasks tend to require low and high skills. Consolidation converges skill demand as formerly divisible low and high skill tasks are transformed into a single indivisible task with medium skill requirements and higher cost of failure. We conclude by developing a new theory for how the separability of tasks mediates the effect of technology change on skill demand by changing the divisibility of labor.

Fuchs, Combemale, Whitefoot, and Glennon. 2021. “The ‘Weighty’ Manufacturing Sector: Transforming Raw Materials Into Physical Goods.” in National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, edited by Andrews, Chatterji, Lerner, and Stern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

The manufacturing sector encompasses a diverse set of industries that are involved in the transformation of raw materials into physical goods. Over the last two decades, the U.S.’s manufacturing value added (MVA) has slightly grown, however, the U.S.’s percentage of global MVA has declined due to China’s exponential rise. The U.S.’s relatively high R&D spending on manufacturing (66% of industrial R&D) and comparatively low manufacturing value added (14%) can in part be explained by foreign multinationals’ globalization of manufacturing facilities in the last decade. As a whole, the manufacturing sector involves higher value added per capita employed, a greater proportion of the labor force with education at the high school level or below while having on average higher wages for that labor force, higher industry spending on R&D, and fewer private equity/venture capital deals financing new ventures than non-manufacturing industries such as services (including software). The above said, drawing implications from sector-wide trends can be misleading because of the variation in these indicators across sub-sectors. Considering the sector’s diversity will be critical to understanding productivity and labor outcome effects, and appropriate policy responses, if any.

Jung, Laureijs, Combemale and Whitefoot. April 2021. “Design for Nonassembly: Current Status and Future Directions.”  Journal of Mechanical Design 143(4): 040801.

Nonassembled products, which are produced from a raw material and post-processed to a final form without any assembly steps, form a large and potentially growing share of the manufacturing sector. However, the design for manufacturing literature has largely focused on assembled products and does not necessarily apply to nonassembled products. In this paper, we review the literature on design for nonassembly (DFNA) and the broader literature on design for manufacturing that has design guidelines and metrics applicable to nonassembled products, including both monolithic single-part products and nonassembly mechanisms. Our review focuses on guidelines that apply across multiple manufacturing processes. We identify guidelines and metrics that seek to reduce costs as well as provide differentiated products across a product family. We cluster the guidelines using latent semantic analysis and find that existing DFNA guidelines fall into four main categories pertaining to (1) manufacturing process, (2) material, (3) tolerance, and (4) geometry. We also identify existing product family metrics that can be modified for nonassembled products to measure some aspects of these categories. Finally, we discuss possible future research directions to more accurately characterize the relationships between design variables and manufacturing costs, including investigating factors related to the complexity of operations at particular process steps and across process steps.

Technical Reports and Other Work

Combemale, Ferrone, Funk, Quay and Waldman-Brown. “Workforce Analytic Approaches to Find Degrees of Freedom in the EV Transition.” Produced with funding from U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains.

This report represents a 12-week effort for the US Department of Energy Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains to characterize the outlook for workforce transition pathways for incumbent workers affected by energy transition, and for workers entering new jobs. We focus on automotive production workers potentially disrupted by the transition from ICEVs to EVs. We also characterize the relative abundance of occupational skills to meet regional EV production needs, both as a source of competition with transitioning automotive workers and as an overall constraint on successful capacity-building for the EV industry. We find that strong industry-associated wage premia for the highest-wage automotive production occupations may present a significant barrier to occupational transitions for disrupted workers. Our work finds examples of potential “soft landing” opportunities for some automotive occupations. Less specialized occupations with lower wages appear to have a lower industry premium, and hence a closer match with the wage distribution of alternative occupations whose skill requirements make them plausible transition candidates. We find that certain automotive production occupations in the same geography as anticipated HST production demand have promising skill similarities and enjoy competitive wage positions relative to outside occupations that could also be candidates for a skills-match with HST requirements.

Combemale. “Tools for Regional Competitiveness to Meet an Era of Labor Scarcity.” Produced with funding from Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness.

This report places regional economic development within the national labor market context. It offers perspectives on lenses and empirical resources for evaluating regional capabilities and needs, as well as levers and analytical barriers for regional decisionmakers in meeting workforce demand challenges, with attention to the comparative advantages (and differential needs) of their populations.

Combemale and Fuchs. “Sorcery at the Technical Frontier: How Embedded Knowledge on the Production Line can Give Workers a Role in Innovation.” Produced with funding from Keystone Research Group.

Technological change in the United States has historically been associated with significant changes in skill and labor demand across the economy, with strong patterns of displacement and skill demand polarization in the manufacturing sector. Workers can view technological change as a threat to their employment or that of future generations, leading to frustration or fear. In this paper, we draw on qualitative evidence from leading-edge firms and organizations in the optoelectronics industry to identify organizational characteristics associated with manufacturing worker participation in innovation, which may present an alternative to the passive or adversarial experience of many workers with respect to technological change. We identify possible firm-level mechanisms for generating greater worker scope of influence in the innovation process and discuss potential policy implications and further work. We find that firms in our sample which are more vertically integrated (outsource less) from design to production exhibit a greater tendency to interface between technology developers and production workers, and in turn we propose that this may give workers a greater influence over how their work will evolve. We find also in our sample that firms on the experimental leading-edge of process innovation, with limited theoretical foundations, relied on experiential knowledge (for production and technology design workers) to support development, making production workers local experts on the highly sensitive “black-box” characteristics of specific equipment or processes. These observations suggest that firm structure and technical certainty could influence the role and influence of workers as participants in technological change. Firm structure especially can be influenced by capital and geographic considerations, which may provide scope for policy oriented toward worker experience.

Combemale, Whitefoot, Ales and Fuchs. “Accelerating U.S. Competitiveness in Integrated Photonics: Quantifying Workforce Training Needs.” Produced with funding from American Institute of Manufacturing Photonics.

I presented applied industry and policy insights from my research on technology change and labor outcomes in the photonics industry to the executive team at the American Institute of Manufacturing Photonics. This presentation offered qualitative and quantitative insights on workforce gaps in optoelectronic manufacturing, highlighting key differences between U.S. and international phenomena and helping focus attention on occupation-specific skill and knowledge gaps and possible response strategies.

Combemale. “Skill Demand Implications of Technological Change”

Dissertation Committee: Erica Fuchs, Katie Whitefoot, Laurence Ales, Brian Kovak

Technological change leads employers to transform their demand for workforce skills, with dramatic consequences for the distribution of economic prosperity and the future of work. However, different technologies can place different and even opposing pressures on skill demand and organizational structure: they may drive increased or decreased division of labor or make workers of different skill levels more or less competitive with machines. To understand and respond to these changes, I develop and explore frameworks for thinking about technological change in relation to labor and organizations. This talk addresses three questions of interest for our understanding of technology change, labor outcomes and opportunities for policy and strategy. 1) What are the implications of two simultaneous technological changes (automation, parts consolidation) for labor skill demand within an occupation? 2) Why and how do technological changes differ in their effects on skill demand? 3) Why and how do technological changes have different effects on occupational (skillset) demand and managerial structure?