Offshoring, low-skilled immigration, and labor market polarization

Arbeitspapier

During the last three decades, jobs in the middle of the skill distribution disappeared, and employment expanded for high- and low-skill occupations. Real wages did not follow the same pattern. Although earnings for the high-skill occupations increased robustly, wages for both low- and middleskill workers remained subdued. We attribute this outcome to the rise in offshoring and low-skilled immigration, and we develop a three-country stochastic growth model to rationalize this outcome. In the model, the increase in offshoring negatively affects the middle-skill occupations but benefits the high-skill ones, which in turn boosts aggregate productivity. As the income of high-skill occupations rises, so does the demand for services provided by low-skill workers. However, low-skill wages remain depressed as a result of the surge in unskilled immigration. Native workers react to immigration by upgrading the skill content of their labor tasks as they invest in training.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2014-28

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Trade and Labor Market Interactions ; Open Economy Macroeconomics
• Thema: labor market polarization ; task upgrading ; offshoring ; labor migration ; heterogeneous agents ; international business cycles

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Mandelman, Federico S. ; Zlate, Andrei
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
• (wo): Atlanta, GA
• (wann): 2014

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/114486
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ