The Anatomy of Job Polarisation in the UK

Andrea Salvatori

No 9193, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on the evolution of job polarisation over time and across skill groups in the UK between 1979 and 2012. The UK has experienced job polarisation in each of the last three decades, with growth in top jobs always exceeding that in bottom ones. Overall, top occupations have gained over 80% of the employment shares lost by middling occupations. The decline of middling occupations is entirely accounted for by non-graduates who have seen their relative numbers decrease and the distribution of their employment shift towards the bottom of the occupational skill distribution. The increase at the top is entirely accounted for by compositional changes, as a result of the increase in the number of graduates since the 1990s. Employment has not polarised for graduates, but has become less concentrated in top occupations, especially in the 2000s. The paper also documents that job polarisation has not been matched by wage polarisation across the occupational distribution in any decade and discusses how these new findings relate to the existing evidence for the US and to the prevailing technology-based explanation for job polarisation. Overall, the importance of occupational changes between skill groups and the performance of occupational wages over time cast doubts on the role of technology as the main driver of polarisation in the UK. In particular, the evidence suggests that supply-side changes are likely to be important factors in explaining why high-skill occupations continued to grow in the 2000s even as they stalled in the US.

Keywords: skill biased technological change; routine employment; occupational mobility; wage inequality; job polarisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J23 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published - published in: Journal for Labour Market Research, 2018, 52, 8 (2018)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The anatomy of job polarisation in the UK (2018)
Journal Article: The anatomy of job polarisation in the UK (2018)
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