Job Polarization and Structural Change

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Barany, Zsofia L.; Siegel, Christian
• 署名单位: Institut d'Etudes Politiques Paris (Sciences Po); University of Kent
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20150258
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 57-89
• 关键词: us labor-market; technological-change; ECONOMIC-GROWTH; self-selection; wage structure; TRANSFORMATION; earnings; tasks; MODEL; preferences

摘要

We document that job polarization-contrary to the consensushas started as early as the 1950s in the United States: middle-wage workers have been losing both in terms of employment and average wage growth compared to low-and high-wage workers. Given that polarization is a long-run phenomenon and closely linked to the shift from manufacturing to services, we propose a structural change driven explanation, where we explicitly model the sectoral choice of workers. Our simple model does remarkably well not only in matching the evolution of sectoral employment, but also of relative wages over the past 50 years.