Cortes, M., Jaimovich, N., Nekarda, J. C. & Siu, H. (2014) “The who and how of disappearing routine jobs“, VoxEU Organisation, 02 Οκτωβρίου.
As routine tasks are increasingly automated, middle-wage jobs are becoming rarer. This column documents the changes in labour-market dynamics behind polarisation, and investigates which workers are affected by it. Flows into middle-wage routine jobs are declining (rather than flows out increasing). Interestingly, routine cognitive workers – who tend to be educated women – are benefiting from this hollowing-out by moving up the occupational ladder.
Labour markets around the world have experienced a profound polarisation in recent decades. The share of employment in middle-wage jobs has declined, while employment in high- and low-wage jobs has increased. In the US, this ‘hollowing out of the middle’ has been linked to declining per-capita employment in occupations with a high content of routine tasks – activities that can be performed by following a well-defined set of procedures and are therefore relatively easy to automate (Autor et al. 2006, Goos et al. 2014). To put this in perspective, as recently as the late-1980s more than one in three American adults was employed in a routine occupation; currently, that figure stands at about one in four.
To design appropriate policy responses, it is important to understand who the disappearance of routine employment is affecting the most, and how the process is playing out. For example, if the decline in routine employment is mainly accounted for by changes in the occupational choices of young workers entering the labour market, the appropriate response would be different than if the decline is due to increasing exit rates from the labour force of prime-aged workers.
Our current research investigates the labour-market changes that underlie the disappearance in middle-wage, routine jobs (Cortes et al. 2014).
- We find that there has been a marked decline in the rate at which workers transition into routine employment. This change is particularly pronounced among the young.
- Women and those with higher education levels have found it easier to adjust to these changes.
They have become more likely to move into higher-paying, non-routine cognitive (‘brain’) jobs.
- This is not the case for men and those with less education, who tended to work in blue-collar occupations.
The loss of routine jobs among these individuals has been offset by transitions into other jobs that also have a high content of routine tasks (such as clerical and administrative work), or transitions into lower-paying, non-routine manual (‘brawn’) jobs.
Σχετικές Αναρτήσεις:
- Arpaia, Α., Kiss, A. & Turrini, A. (2014) “Is unemployment structural or cyclical? Main features of job matching in the EU after the crisis“, European Economy, European Commission Economic Papers 527, Σεπτέμβριος.
- Mitchell, B. (2014) “European Employment Strategy – barely a new job in sight“, Bill Mitchell Blog, 17 Σεπτεμβρίου.
- Bowles, J. (2014) “The computerisation of European jobs – who will win and who will lose from the impact of new technology onto old areas of employment?“, Bruegel Institute, 17 Ιουλίου.