Deunionization and skills

Joseph Pickens

Labour Economics, 2025, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: A search and matching model is developed to investigate the effect of skill distribution change and skill-biased technical change (SBTC) on United States private sector unionization. The model’s equilibrium is such that workers with moderate skill will select into the union sector while those with low or high skill will select into the non-union sector. The model’s calibration to the U.S. private sector employs a novel method to separate movements in the skill distribution and skill premium. This, in turn, is used to help identify SBTC. A counterfactual analysis documents a significant relationship between the skill distribution and unionization. In particular, a rise in skill dispersion accounts for one-seventh of U.S. private sector deunionization between 1984 and 2019. This analysis also gives a quantitative effect of SBTC in line with the literature: it accounts for between one-fifth and two-fifths of deunionization depending on the specification. However, part of its qualitative effect is novel: SBTC shifts unionization towards more skilled workers. Further analysis suggests that skill distribution change is not likely to have a significant effect on private sector unionization in the future.

Keywords: Unions; Private sector unions; Skill-biased technical change; Skill distribution; Skill premium; Enterprise-level bargaining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J50 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537125000387
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:labeco:v:94:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000387

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102711

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().