Does it take extra skills to work in a large city?
Harm Jan Rouwendal and
Sierdjan Koster
Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2025, vol. 112, issue C
Abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between job complexity and agglomeration. For this, we assess whether vacancies in larger cities require more skills than vacancies for similar jobs elsewhere. The use of online job vacancy data allows us to empirically analyse the spatial variation in skill requirements within occupations. Results show that jobs in dense areas require extra skills compared to similar jobs in sparsely populated areas. Moreover, we show that jobs in large cities require a more diverse skill set. This indicates that urban jobs are more complex. These findings help explain the productivity premium of cities and spatial inequalities between urban and rural labour markets.
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046225000110
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:regeco:v:112:y:2025:i:c:s0166046225000110
DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2025.104094
Access Statistics for this article
Regional Science and Urban Economics is currently edited by D.P McMillen and Y. Zenou
More articles in Regional Science and Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().