The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market

We offer a unified analysis of the growth of low-skill service occupations between 1980 and 2005 and the concurrent polarization of US employment and wages. We hypothesize that polarization stems from the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the fall...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American economic review 2013-08, Vol.103 (5), p.1553-1597
Main Authors: Autor, David H., Dorn, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Censuses
Commuting
Economic theory
Education
Employment
Equilibrium models
Inequality
Information technology
Labor
Labor market
Labor markets
Labor supply
Labour market
Local labor markets
Occupations
Service industries
Service industry workers
Skilled workers
Skills
Spatial models
Studies
U.S.A
Unemployment
Unskilled workers
Wage differential
Wages
Wages & salaries
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Summary:We offer a unified analysis of the growth of low-skill service occupations between 1980 and 2005 and the concurrent polarization of US employment and wages. We hypothesize that polarization stems from the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the falling cost of automating routine, codifiable job tasks. Applying a spatial equilibrium model, we corroborate four implications of this hypothesis. Local labor markets that specialized in routine tasL · differentially adopted information technology, reallocated low-skill labor into service occupations (employment polarization), experienced earnings growth at the tails of the distribution (wage polarization), and received inflows of skilled labor.
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/aer.103.5.1553