Job Tasks and Wages in Developed Countries: Evidence from PIAAC

Sara De La Rica, Lucas Gortazar and Piotr Lewandowski

Labour Economics, 2020, vol. 65, issue C

Abstract: This paper addresses the empirical relationship between job tasks and wages for a harmonised sample of 19 developed countries. We do so by using worker-level PIAAC data to account for task heterogeneity within occupations. Our contribution is threefold: First, we compute abstract, routine and manual task measures that are found to be well-validated visa-vis previous research. Second, we estimate task prices, and find that a one-standard-deviation increase in abstract tasks is related to a 3.3-log-point wage premium, whereas there is a 2.6 to 2.9-log-point wage penalty for each standard deviation of routine (manual) tasks. Development factors and labour market institutions, particularly union coverage and strictness of employment protection legislation, seem to play a role in the differences in all three task prices.

Keywords: Job tasks; task approach; computer use at work; job task prices; PIAAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:65:y:2020:i:c:s092753712030049x

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101845

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