De-routinization of Jobs and Polarization of Earnings – Evidence from 35 Countries

Maximilian Longmuir, Carsten Schröder and Matteo Targa ()

No 796, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: The job polarization hypothesis suggests a U-shaped pattern of employment growth along the earnings/skill distribution, which is driven by simultaneous growth in the employment of high-skill/high-earnings and low-skill/low-earnings occupations due to Routine-Biased Technological Change (RBTC) [Acemoglu and Autor, 2011]. An aspect of both high social and political relevance is the implications of job polarization and technological change for earnings distributions. In this paper, we put the RBTC trend into perspective by decomposing earnings growth into parts attributable to job polarization and other components. Using a novel harmonized dataset provided by the Luxembourg Income Study and the Economic Research Forum, we find evidence for employment polarization in 30 out of the 35 countries under analysis, in both developed and developing economies. However, the effects of this displacement in the workforce have no polarizing effect on the earnings distribution in 33 countries, once we account for between and within variation in occupational classes returns.

JEL-codes: D3 J3 J8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 112 pages
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: De-Routinization of Jobs and Polarization of Earnings: Evidence from 35 Countries (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:796

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