Inequality and Specialization: The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs in the United States
Inequality and Specialization: The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs in the United States
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1434624
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发表时间：
2009-07
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
David Autor;David Dorn
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
David Autor;David Dorn
在低技能职业的工资和就业率急剧下降、高技能职业的工资和就业率上升的十年之后，美国收入和就业增长的形态在20世纪90年代出现了急剧分化。在低技能和高技能工作中，就业份额和相对收入都有所上升，导致技能水平与就业和工资增长之间呈现明显的u型关系。本文分析了美国工资和就业分布的下尾形状变化的来源。第一个贡献是记录了一个迄今为止不为人知的事实：下尾巴的扭曲基本上是由一个直接的原因造成的——低教育程度的面对面服务职业的就业和工资的上升。我们研究了1950年至2005年期间当地劳动力市场水平上升的决定因素。我们的方法植根于一个不断变化的任务专业化模型，在这个模型中，“常规”的文书和生产任务被自动化所取代。我们发现，在最初专门从事常规密集型职业的劳动力市场中，就业和工资在1980年后两极分化，高技能职业和低技能服务工作的就业和收入都在增长。
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.