Alternative Measures of Offshorability: A Survey Approach

Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger

No 15287, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper reports on a household survey specially designed to measure what we call the "offshorability" of jobs, defined as the ability to perform the work duties from abroad. We develop multiple measures of offshorability, using both self-reporting and professional coders. All the measures find that roughly 25% of U.S. jobs are offshorable. Our three preferred measures agree between 70% and 80% of the time. Furthermore, professional coders appear to provide the most accurate assessments, which is good news because the Census Bureau could collect data on offshorability without adding a single question to the CPS. Empirically, more educated workers appear to hold somewhat more offshorable jobs, and offshorability does not have systematic effects on either wages or the probability of layoff. Perhaps most surprisingly, routine work is no more offshorable than other work.

JEL-codes: C83 F16 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Note: EFG ITI LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Published as Alan S. Blinder & Alan B. Krueger, 2013. "Alternative Measures of Offshorability: A Survey Approach," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(S1), pages S97 - S128.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15287.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Alternative Measures of Offshorability: A Survey Approach (2013)
Working Paper: Alternative Measures of Offshorability: A Survey Approach (2009)
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:nbr:nberwo:15287

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15287

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().