Global Value Chains and Trade in Value-Added: An Initial Assessment of the Impact on Jobs and Productivity

Oecd

No 190, OECD Trade Policy Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: This paper contributes to a better understanding of the impact of global value chains (GVCs) on jobs and productivity by providing new evidence on employment embodied in value-added trade flows. Linking jobs data to the Trade in Value-Added (TiVA) indicators first highlights that a large share of employment in OECD and key partner countries relies on consumption taking place abroad and for most countries this share has increased between 1995 and 2011. There are differences across industries in the share of jobs embodied in exports but in all industries a majority of these jobs originates in the service sector. In almost all countries, the jobs embodied in exports are shifting towards high-skill and medium-skill occupations. Within GVCs, there is also a shift from employment in core manufacturing activities to employment in service support functions such as R&D, distribution, logistics, marketing, sales and customer services. The impact of GVCs on the number of people engaged in each industry is the combination of several factors but related to specialisation patterns and the evolution of productivity. In this assessment, it is important to look at the whole value chain and not to focus only on industries where GVCs are prevalent. Job creation in sectors less exposed to GVCs is the consequence of productivity gains in sectors the most integrated in GVCs.

Keywords: employment; global value chains; occupations; productivity; trade; trade in tasks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 F23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-07-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger, nep-int, nep-lma and nep-tid
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/5jlvc7sb5s8w-en (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:traaab:190-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OECD Trade Policy Papers from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().