Arbeitspapier

Can the Labor Demand Curve Explain Job Polarization?

In recent decades, many industrialized economies have witnessed a pattern of job polarization. While shifts in labor demand, namely routinization or offshoring, constitute conventional explanations for job polarization, there is little research on whether shifts in labor supply along the labor demand curve may equally result in job polarization. In this study, we assess the impact of labor supply shifts on job polarization. To this end, we determine unconditional wage elasticities of labor demand from a unique estimation of a profit-maximization model on linked employer-employee data from Germany. Unlike standard practice, we explicitly allow for variations in output and find that negative scale effects matter. Both for a skill- and a novel task-based division of the workforce, our elasticity estimates show that supply shifts from immigration and a decline in collective bargaining successfully explain occupational employment patterns during the 1990s.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15361

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Labor Demand
Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
Industry Studies: Manufacturing: General
Thema
labor demand
job polarization
skills
tasks

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Peichl, Andreas
Popp, Martin
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
(wo)
Bonn
(wann)
2022

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

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Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Peichl, Andreas
  • Popp, Martin
  • Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Entstanden

  • 2022

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