 The skill-specific impact of past and projected occupational declineLena Hensvik and Oskar Skans Labour Economics, 2023, vol. 81, issue C Abstract: Using population-wide data on a vector of cognitive abilities and productive non-cognitive traits among Swedish male workers, we show that occupational employment growth has been monotonically skill-biased in terms of these intellectual skills, despite a simultaneous (polarizing) decline in middle-wage jobs. Employees in growing low-wage occupations have more of these skills than employees in other low-wage occupations. Conversely, employees in declining, routine-task intensive, mid-wage occupations have comparably little of these skills. Employees in occupations that have grown relative to other occupations with similar wages have more intellectual skills overall but are particularly well-endowed with the non-cognitive trait “Social Maturity” and cognitive abilities in the “Technical” and “Verbal” domains. Projections from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics about future occupational labor demand do not indicate that the relationship between employment growth and skills is about to change in the near future. Keywords: Skills; Polarization; Future of work (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:81:y:2023:i:c:s0927537123000015 DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2023.102326 Access Statistics for this article Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier |
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