Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline, and Low-Skilled Immigration

Eric Gould

No 9107, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates whether the increasing "residual wage inequality" trend is related to manufacturing decline and the influx of low-skilled immigrants. There is a vast literature arguing that technological change, international trade, and institutional factors have played a significant role in the inequality trend. However, most of the trend is unexplained by observable factors. This paper attempts to "explain" the growth in the unexplained variance of wages by exploiting variation across locations (states or cities) in the United States in the local level of "residual inequality." The evidence shows that a shrinking manufacturing sector increases inequality. In addition, an influx of low-skilled immigrants increases inequality, but this effect is concentrated in areas with a steeper manufacturing decline. Similar results are found for two alternative measures linked to increasing inequality: the increasing return to education and the decline in the employment rate of non-college men. The overall evidence suggests that the manufacturing and immigration trends have hollowed-out the overall demand for middle-skilled workers in all sectors, while increasing the supply of workers in lower skilled jobs. Both phenomena are producing downward pressure on the relative wages of workers at the low end of the income distribution.

Keywords: low-skilled immigration; manufacturing; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2015-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2019, 129 (619), 1281–1326

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9107.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline and Low-skilled Immigration (2019)
Working Paper: Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline, and Low-Skilled Immigration (2015)
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:iza:izadps:dp9107

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().