Task-Biased Changes of Employment and Remuneration: The Case of Occupations

Stephan Kampelmann and Francois Rycx

No 364, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: Different empirical studies suggest that the structure of employment in the U.S. and Great Britain tends to polarise into "good" and "bad" jobs. We provide updated evidence that polarisation also occurred in Germany since the mid-1980s until 2008. Using representative panel data, we show that this trend corresponds to a task bias in employment changes: routine jobs have lost relative employment, especially in predominantly manual occupations. We further provide the first direct test for whether task-biased technological change affects employment and remuneration in the same direction and conclude that there is no consistent task bias in the evolution of pay rules. By contrast, compositional changes like the proportion of union members are clearly associated with long-term changes in the remuneration of occupations.

Keywords: Polarisation; technological change; pay rules; occupations; inequality; tasks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 p.
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.369706.de/diw_sp0364.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Task-Biased Changes of Employment and Remuneration: The Case of Occupations (2011)
Working Paper: Task-Biased Changes of Employment and Remuneration: The Case of Occupations (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp364

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