That Was then, this is Now: Skills and Routinization in the 2000s.

We analyze changes in the skill content of occupations in US four-digit manufacturing industries between 1999 and 2010. Following a ‘task-based’ approach, we elaborate a measure of Non-Routine skill intensity that captures the effects of industry exposure to both technology and international trade. The paper adds to previous literature by focusing on both the determinants of demand for Non-Routine skills and their effects on industry productivity and wages. The key finding is that import competition from low-wage countries has been a strong driver of demand for Non-Routine skills during the 2000s. Both technology and imports from low-wage countries are associated with mild cross-industry convergence in skill intensity while imports from high and medium wage countries are at root of persistent heterogeneity across occupational groups. We also find that higher Non-Routine skill intensity has had at best a modest effect on productivity and wages, except for high-skill occupations.

[1]  Ron Boschma,et al.  Labour Market Externalities and Regional Growth in Sweden: The Importance of Labour Mobility between Skill-Related Industries , 2014 .

[2]  D. Jorgenson,et al.  A Retrospective Look at the U.S. Productivity Growth Resurgence , 2007 .

[3]  Richard J. Murnane,et al.  The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market , 2004 .

[4]  Romain Wacziarg,et al.  A Monte Carlo study of growth regressions , 2004 .

[5]  M. Nerlove,et al.  Biases in dynamic models with fixed effects , 1988 .

[6]  Robert J. Kauffman,et al.  What drives global ICT adoption? Analysis and research directions , 2011, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[7]  M. Raitano.  Competition, Firm Size and Returns to Skills: Evidence from Currency Shocks and Market Liberalisations , 2014 .

[8]  Stefano Scarpetta,et al.  Regulation, Productivity and Growth: OECD Evidence , 2003 .

[9]  S. Athey,et al.  The impact of information technology on emergency health care outcomes. , 2002, The Rand journal of economics.

[10]  Paul A. David,et al.  The Economic Future in Historical Perspective , 2006 .

[11]  L. Edwards,et al.  US Trade and Wages: The Misleading Implications of Conventional Trade Theory , 2010 .

[12]  R. Blundell,et al.  Initial Conditions and Moment Restrictions in Dynamic Panel Data Models , 1998 .

[13]  Yi Lu,et al.  Import Competition and Skill Content in U.S. Manufacturing Industries , 2013, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[14]  Stephen R. Bond.  Dynamic panel data models: a guide to micro data methods and practice , 2002 .

[15]  Susanto Basu,et al.  Information and Communications Technology as a General-Purpose Technology: Evidence from U.S Industry Data , 2006 .

[16]  Eric J. Bartelsman,et al.  Understanding productivity: lessons from longitudinal microdata , 2000 .

[17]  Gordon H. Hanson.  The Rise of Middle Kingdoms: Emerging Economies in Global Trade , 2012 .

[18]  David Autor,et al.  Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings , 2010 .

[19]  A. Manning,et al.  THE RISING POLARIZATION OF WORK IN BRITAIN , 2004 .

[20]  M. Arellano,et al.  Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations , 1991 .

[21]  D. Consoli,et al.  Innovation and skill dynamics: a life-cycle approach , 2015 .

[22]  Janet L. Norwood.  Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Data Quality and Public Policy , 1990 .

[23]  Paul Krugman,et al.  Trade and Wages, Reconsidered , 2008 .

[24]  Peter K. Schott,et al.  Survival of the best fit: exposure to low-wage countries and the (uneven) growth of U.S. manufacturing plants , 2003 .

[25]  Z. Griliches.  Output Measurement in the Service Sectors , 1992 .

[26]  David H. Autor,et al.  Trends in U.S. Wage Inequality: Revising the Revisionists , 2008, The Review of Economics and Statistics.

[27]  George A. Akerlof.  Path dependence, its critics and the quest for 'historical economics' , 2002 .

[28]  David Roodman,et al.  A Note on the Theme of Too Many Instruments , 2008 .

[29]  Fulvio Castellacci,et al.  Technological regimes and sectoral differences in productivity growth , 2007 .

[30]  A. Krueger.  How Computers Have Changed the Wage Structure: Evidence from Microdata, 1984-1989 , 1991 .

[31]  A. Manning,et al.  Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain , 2007, The Review of Economics and Statistics.

[32]  D. Acemoglu.  Changes in Unemployment and Wage Inequality: an Alternative Theory and Some Evidence , 1998 .

[33]  Susanto Basu,et al.  Information and Communications Technology as a General-Purpose Technology: Evidence from U.S Industry Data , 2006 .

[34]  Zvi Griliches,et al.  Purchased Services, Outsourcing, Computers, and Productivity in Manufacturing , 1991 .

[35]  F. Vona,et al.  Coordinating the accumulation of physical and human capital in different institutional settings , 2012 .

[36]  R. Nelson,et al.  Investment in humans, technological diffusion and economic growth , 1965 .

[37]  C. Freund,et al.  The Anatomy of China's Export Growth , 2008 .

[38]  M. Arellano,et al.  Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models , 1995 .

[39]  David Autor,et al.  The Growth of Low Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the U.S. Labor Market , 2009, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[40]  E. Verhoogen.  Trade, Quality Upgrading and Wage Inequality in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector: Theory and Evidence from an Exchange Rate Shock , 2004 .

[41]  Scott Stern,et al.  The Impact of Information Technology on Emergency Health Care Outcomes , 2002 .

[42]  D. Davis,et al.  Trade, Firms, and Wages: Theory and Evidence , 2008 .

[43]  Castellacci Fulvio.  Technological paradigms, regimes and trajectories: Manufacturing and service industries in a new taxonomy of sectoral patterns of innovation , 2007 .

[44]  Alexandra Spitz-Oener.  Technical Change, Job Tasks, and Rising Educational Demands: Looking outside the Wage Structure , 2006, Journal of Labor Economics.

[45]  James D. Feyrer,et al.  Will the Stork Return to Europe and Japan? Understanding Fertility within Developed Nations , 2008, The journal of economic perspectives : a journal of the American Economic Association.

[46]  David Roodman.  How to do Xtabond2: An Introduction to Difference and System GMM in Stata , 2006 .

[47]  Peter K. Schott,et al.  The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment , 2013 .

[48]  E. Wolff,et al.  Productivity, Computerization, and Skill Change , 2002 .

[49]  Stephen D. Oliner,et al.  The Resurgence of Growth in the Late 1990s: Is Information Technology the Story? , 2000 .

[50]  Paul A. David,et al.  General Purpose Technologies and Productivity Surges: Historical Reflections on the Future of the ICT Revolution , 2005 .

[51]  Lawrence F. Katz,et al.  The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity , 1996 .

[52]  Paul Beaudry,et al.  The Great Reversal in the Demand for Skill and Cognitive Tasks , 2013, Journal of Labor Economics.

[53]  F. Malerba,et al.  Exploring factors affecting international technological specialization: the role of knowledge flows and the structure of innovative activity , 2003 .

[54]  Rowena Gray.  Taking technology to task: The skill content of technological change in early twentieth century United States , 2013 .

[55]  A. Blinder.  How Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable , 2007 .

[56]  Maria Guadalupe.  Product Market Competition, Returns to Skill, and Wage Inequality , 2004, Journal of Labor Economics.

[57]  Erik Brynjolfsson,et al.  Race against the machine : how the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy , 2011 .

[58]  Ann E. Harrison,et al.  Estimating the Impact of Trade and Offshoring on American Workers using the Current Population Surveys , 2009, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[59]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial , 1970 .

[60]  R. Langlois.  Cognitive Comparative Advantage and the Organization of Work: Lessons from Herbert Simon's Vision of the Future , 2003 .

[61]  D. Consoli,et al.  Analysis of the Graduate Labour Market in Finland: Spatial Agglomeration and Skill–Job Match , 2013 .

[62]  Daniel Trefler,et al.  Wake Up and Smell the Ginseng: International Trade and the Rise of Incremental Innovation in Low-Wage Countries , 2007 .

[63]  A. Manning,et al.  Job Polarization in Europe , 2009 .

[64]  Per Krusell,et al.  Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department Staa Report # 236 Capital-skill Complementarity and Inequality: a Macroeconomic Analysis , 2022 .

[65]  Ligang Song.  China’s Growing Role in World Trade , 2012 .

[66]  O. Cadot,et al.  Export Diversification: What's behind the Hump? , 2007, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[67]  Lawrence F. Katz,et al.  Computing Inequality: Have Computers Changed the Labor Market? , 1997 .

[68]  David Autor.  The “task approach” to labor markets: an overview , 2013, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[69]  G. Violante,et al.  Investment-Specific Technical Change in the Us (1947-2000): Measurement and Macroeconomic Consequences , 2002 .

[70]  G. Peri,et al.  Task Specialisation, Immigration and Wages , 2008 .

[71]  Gordon H. Hanson,et al.  The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States , 2012, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[72]  W. Gray,et al.  The NBER Manufacturing Productivity Database , 1996 .

[73]  G. Dosi,et al.  Technical Change and Economic Theory , 1989 .

[74]  R. Feenstra,et al.  China's Growing Role in World Trade , 2010 .

[75]  Stephen Bond,et al.  GMM Estimation with persistent panel data: an application to production functions , 1999 .