The Role of College Education in the Rise of "New Work": Measurement and Evidence

Gueyon Kim, Cassandra Merritt and Giovanni Peri

No 21744, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We develop a novel semantic-distance-based algorithm and apply it to job titles data to identify ``new work'' — new types of jobs introduced in a labor market. Implementing these measures for the US (1980-2010), we show that the share of college-educated workers across occupations and locations is the strongest predictor of new work, even after controlling for technological change, trade, immigration, population aging, and agglomeration economies. Using pre-1920 land-grant colleges as instruments in matched treatment-control analyses, we find evidence consistent with a strong, positive causal effect of college-educated density on "new work" creation. Complementary analysis based on Lightcast online vacancy data (2017-2022) confirms this pattern.

Keywords: Human; capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 J61 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
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