Upgrading or Polarization? Occupational Change in Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, 1990-2008
By Jorge Rodríguez Menés, Daniel Oesch. Social Science Research Network, 2010
308 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We analyze the pattern of occupational change over the last two decades in Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland: which jobs have been expanding – high-paid jobs, low-paid jobs or both? Based on individual-level data, we examine what hypothesis is most consistent with the observed change: skill-biased technical change, routinization, skill supply evolution or wage-setting institutions? Our analysis reveals massive occupational upgrading that closely matches educational expansion: employment expanded most at the top of the occupational hierarchy, among managers and professionals. In parallel, mid-range occupations (clerks and production workers) declined relative to those at the bottom (interpersonal service workers). This U-shaped pattern of upgrading is consistent with the routinization hypothesis: technology seems a better substitute for average-paid clerical and manufacturing jobs than for low-end service employment. Yet country differences in low-paid service job creation suggest that wage-setting institutions play an important role, channelling technological change into more or less polarized patterns of upgrading.
Subfields: Demography, Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e845e63161d3991b8018632f7db9539021c513a6
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Citations in the corpus
- Putting the Child-Centred Investment Strategy to the Test: Evidence for the EU27: (2013, background): “traditional working-class jobs (Oesch and Menés 2011).”
- Exposure of occupations to technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (2021, background): “As the share of routine tasks is highest among middle-paid occupations, computerization was accompanied by a hollowingout of the wage structure, with declining shares of middle-paid jobs, known as employment polarization (Goos et al., 2014; Autor et al., 2006; Oesch & Menés, 2011).”