Inequality and specialization: the growth of low-skill service jobs in the United States

Arbeitspapier

After a decade in which wages and employment fell precipitously in low-skill occupations and expanded in high-skill occupations, the shape of U.S. earnings and job growth sharply polarized in the 1990s. Employment shares and relative earnings rose in both low and high-skill jobs, leading to a distinct U-shaped relationship between skill levels and employment and wage growth. This paper analyzes the sources of the changing shape of the lower-tail of the U.S. wage and employment distributions. A first contribution is to document a hitherto unknown fact: the twisting of the lower tail is substantially accounted for by a single proximate cause - rising employment and wages in low-education, in-person service occupations. We study the determinants of this rise at the level of local labor markets over the period of 1950 through 2005. Our approach is rooted in a model of changing task specialization in which routine clerical and production tasks are displaced by automation. We find that in labor markets that were initially specialized in routine-intensive occupations, employment and wages polarized after 1980, with growing employment and earnings in both high-skill occupations and low-skill service jobs.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 4290

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion ; Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
• Thema: Skill demand ; job tasks ; inequality ; polarization ; technological change ; occupational choice ; Arbeitsmarkt ; Qualifikation ; Ungelernte Arbeitskräfte ; Lohn ; Beschäftigung ; Arbeitsmarktungleichgewicht ; Strukturwandel ; USA

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Autor, David H. ; Dorn, David
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2009

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/36224
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-20090824183
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ