Abstract: What drives firm investments in new technologies, a key source of economic growth? I argue that young labor market entrants, i.e.~trainees, are a central determinant because of their low opportunity costs and high returns from acquiring new tech skills. I provide causal evidence for this hypothesis by leveraging a large and exogenous trainee supply shock caused by an education reform in Germany in 2001. Lower trainee supply decreases firm capital investments, in particular in industries undergoing strong technological change, and deteriorates the technical status of firms' machinery, indicating complementarity between new entrants and new technologies. Consistent with the skill-acquisition mechanism, this investment-depressing effect is stronger in firms characterized by high human capital investments in their trainees. These findings dampen hopes of counteracting shortages of young entrants by substituting labor with capital.

Abstract: Does educational content respond to technological advances, and do such changes enable workers to acquire new relevant expertise? We study how digital technology transforms skill acquisition and the resulting impacts on workers' careers. We construct a novel database of legally binding training curricula spanning the near universe of vocational training in Germany over five decades, and link curriculum updates to breakthrough technologies using Natural Language Processing. Technological change spurs curriculum updates, and training content shifts toward digital and social skills while reducing routine-intensive task content, predominantly through new skill emergence. Curriculum updates account for two-thirds of the overall deroutinization in vocational skill supply over this period. Using administrative employer-employee data and a stacked difference-in-differences design, we show that curriculum updates enable workers to adapt to new skill demands: new-skilled workers earn higher wages, with wage increases of up to 5.5\% for technology-exposed occupations. In contrast, the oldest occupational incumbents experience wage declines, indicating skill obsolescence. Firms increase capital investments when exposed to workers with updated skills, consistent with enhanced capital-skill complementarity. These findings highlight the central role of within-occupation skill supply adjustments in meeting evolving labor market demands.

Abstract: We investigate the diffusion of frontier technologies across German firms before and during the Covid-19 crisis. Our analysis tracks the nature, timing, and pandemic-related motivations behind technology investments, using tailor-made longitudinal survey data linked to administrative worker--firm records. Technologies adopted after the onset of the pandemic increasingly facilitated remote work and mitigated the negative employment effects of the crisis. Overall, however, investments in frontier technologies declined sharply, equivalent to a loss of 1.4 years of pre-pandemic investment activity. This procyclical adoption pattern is particularly striking since the pandemic created clear incentives to experiment with new technologies. Our findings highlight how short-run fluctuations may influence medium-run economic growth through their impact on technology diffusion.