This research project studies the effects of the automation process on social inequality through its impact on firm productivity and performance, labor demand and wages. The project’s contribution is threefold. First, it will assemble the first matched employer-employee, panel-form, databank on automation and robotization in Italy. Second, the databank will be used to: i) assess the “bias” of the current wave of technological change (skill- vs. routine-based); ii) identify routines that can hardly be automatized (“bottlenecks”); iii) estimate the effect of automation on the relative demand of skilled and non-routine workers, relative to unskilled and routine workers; iv) estimate the impact of automation on cross-firm productivity differentials; v) assess whether automatization increases firms’ resilience in periods of turmoil (i.e., the 2007-08 crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine War) through its productivity-competitiveness effects; vi) study whether and how the innovation-driven change in labor demand transmits to the wage gap between different types of workers (skilled versus unskilled, non-routine versus routine) and, definitively, to social inequality. Third, the project will provide novel insights on the nature and implications of the potential trade-offs between industrial policies and social inequality.