The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Autor, David H.; Dorn, David
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.5.1553
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 1553-1597
• 关键词: technological-change; wage inequality; demand; PRODUCTIVITY; EMPLOYMENT; TRENDS; IMPACT; tasks; work

摘要

We offer a unified analysis of the growth of low-skill service occupations between 1980 and 2005 and the concurrent polarization of US employment and wages. We hypothesize that polarization stems from the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the falling cost of automating routine, codifiable job tasks. Applying a spatial equilibrium model, we corroborate four implications of this hypothesis. Local labor markets that specialized in routine tasks differentially adopted information technology, reallocated low-skill labor into service occupations (employment polarization), experienced earnings growth at the tails of the distribution (wage polarization), and received inflows of skilled labor. (JEL J24, J31, R23)