Digitalisation, platformisation and the transformations of local labour markets

Rapid technological progress, primarily in the fields of artificial intelligence and advanced automation, have relaunched the debate regarding their impact on employment, highlighting vast heterogeneity across occupational groups, with the least skilled and least educated workers proving to be the most vulnerable to substitution effects. This paper re-examines this statement by conceptually and empirically distinguishing digitalisation from platformisation, depending on their use of digital tools for the organisation of market transactions, and shows their positive, though highly selective, effects for specific occupational groups. Based on an empirical analysis of Italian NUTS3 regions in the period 2018–2023, the paper highlights the role of platforms for the creation of gig jobs, as much as the importance of advanced digitalisation for the creation of creative ones, highlighting an undesirable downgrading of jobs and an enduring polarisation trend in labour markets, which calls for mitigating policies accompanying the diffusion of digitalisation and platformisation in the upcoming years.