Skill-biased technological change again? The impacts of matching platforms on local labor markets

Do online matching platforms affect offline labor markets? To answer this question, we exploit a quasi-experiment setting, where a large internet-based matching platform, TaskRabbit, has gradually entered different U.S. cities since 2008. Our difference-in-differences estimation shows that the introduction of TaskRabbit is associated with a decrease in the number of local full-time workers in the traditional housekeeping industry. Moreover, the negative effect is mainly driven by a significant decrease in the number of cognitive routine workers (e.g., first line managers) after the TaskRabbit entry, given a non-significant change in that of manual non-routine workers (e.g., janitors).