Labor market polarization over the business cycle

Arbeitspapier

One of the most important long-run trends in the U.S. labor market is polarization, defined as the relative growth of employment in high-skill jobs (such as management and technical positions) and low-skill jobs (such as food-service and janitorial work) amid the concurrent decline in middle-skill jobs (such as clerical, construction, manufacturing, and retail occupations). Middle-skill job losses typically result from outsourcing labor to lower-wage countries or from substituting automated technologies for routine tasks. Economists are now beginning to study how long-run polarization might be related to short-run business cycles, but doing so requires the construction of quarterly datasets with consistent occupational data over long periods of time. The authors of this paper construct a new dataset of occupational employment and unemployment that extends from 1947:Q3 to 2013:Q4. Using this dataset, along with more-recent individual-level data from the Current Population Survey, the authors study how recessions typically affect employment in various occupations, what employment alternatives are available to middle-skill workers who become unemployed, and whether the ongoing erosion of middle-skill job opportunities is related to long-term declines in labor force participation among men.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Papers ; No. 14-16

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; Labor Demand ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion ; Labor Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs ; Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Foote, Christopher L. ; Ryan, Richard W.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
• (where): Boston, MA
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/109697
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET