The Occupational Structures of Low- and High-Wage Service Sector Establishments

Eliza Forsythe

Economic Development Quarterly, 2019, vol. 33, issue 2, 76-91

Abstract: The occupational structure of an establishment provides a description of its production process by detailing the distribution and relative intensity of tasks performed. In this study, the author investigates whether there are substantive differences in the occupational structures of low- and high-wage service sector establishments. The author shows that low-wage establishments organize production to use less labor in professional occupations compared with high-wage establishments operating in the same local labor market and industry. In addition, low-wage establishments employ fewer individuals in information technology occupations, employ fewer managers, and have substantially wider supervisory spans of control. These results indicate that, despite operating in the same narrowly defined labor and product markets, low-wage establishments organize production to less intensively use labor in skilled occupations.

Keywords: disadvantaged workers; labor economics; service industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0891242419838328 (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:sae:ecdequ:v:33:y:2019:i:2:p:76-91

DOI: 10.1177/0891242419838328

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development Quarterly
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().