The Evolution of Work in the United States

Enghin Atalay, Phai Phongthiengtham, Sebastian Sotelo and Daniel Tannenbaum

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-34

Abstract: Using the text from job ads, we introduce a new dataset to describe the evolution of work from 1950 to 2000. We show that the transformation of the US labor market away from routine cognitive and manual tasks and toward nonroutine interactive and analytic tasks has been larger than prior research has found, with a substantial fraction of total changes occurring within narrowly defined job titles. We provide narrative and systematic evidence on changes in task content within job titles and on the emergence and disappearance of individual job titles.

JEL-codes: E24 J21 J24 J31 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (96)

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DOI: 10.1257/app.20190070

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