Job Tasks, Worker Skills, and Productivity

G. Jacob Blackwood, Cindy Cunningham, Matthew Dey, Lucia Foster, Cheryl Grim, John Haltiwanger, Rachel Nesbit, Sabrina Pabilonia, Jay Stewart, Cody Tuttle and Zoltan Wolf

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: We present new empirical evidence suggesting that we can better understand productivity dispersion across businesses by accounting for differences in how tasks, skills, and occupations are organized. This aligns with growing attention to the task content of production. We link establishment-level data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey with productivity data from the Census Bureau’s manufacturing surveys. Our analysis reveals strong relationships between establishment productivity and task, skill, and occupation inputs. These relationships are highly nonlinear and vary by industry. When we account for these patterns, we can explain a substantial share of productivity dispersion across establishments.

Keywords: productivity dispersion; tasks; skills; occupations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-tid
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/ces/CES-WP-25-63.pdf First version, 2025 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:25-63

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