Improvement and Replacement: The Dual Impact of Automation on Employees’ Job Satisfaction

Research focuses mainly on the impact of automation on employment and wages but pays little attention to its impact on employee job satisfaction, especially in the context of the Global South. Using survey data from China, this article investigates the impact of automation on employee job satisfaction due to the effects of job improvement and position replacement stress. The results indicate that automation can improve the job satisfaction of individual employees but reduces the job satisfaction of employees with a position that can be replaced easily by automation. The improvement and replacement effects coexist within the impact of automation. Through a structural equation model, this article finds that the improvement effect arises from an increase in job income, safety, and ability, whereas replacement stress is produced through the mediating effect of job stress and boredom. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the improvement effect is present in young employees with low job skills, position competency, and experience requirements, while replacement stress occurs in middle-aged and elderly employees with high job skills and high position competency and experience requirements. Our study provides evidence for the construction of an internal labor market in enterprises and labor policy interventions in the digital age.