 This paper studies the labour market dynamics of different cities by analysing the spread of beneficial or detrimental traits through the network. The authors propose a new measure called EMPSI to quantify the influence of nodes on the spread of traits. They find that the spread of traits varies significantly with city size, with larger cities having more influence than smaller ones. This suggests that large cities may be better equipped to handle the effects of automation compared to small cities. This article was authored by Shun Nan Feng and Alex Rutherford.