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

“This paper offered an integrated explanation and detailed empirical analysis of the forces behind the changing shape of low education, low wage employment in the US labor market. A first contribution of the paper was to document a hitherto unknown fact. The twisting of the lower tail of the employment and earnings distributions was substantially accounted for by rising employment and wages in a single broad category of employment: service occupations” (p.1555).(Abstractor: Author)

“Between 1980 and 2005, the share of hours worked in service occupations among non-college workers rose by more than 50 percent. Simultaneously, real hourly wages of non-college workers in service occupations increased by 11 log points, considerably exceeding wage growth in other low-skill occupations. This phenomenon is broadly important because it offers insight into the polarization of employment and earnings in the United States and, potentially, other industrialized countries…. A key fact documented by this paper is that rising employment and wages in service occupations account for a substantial share of aggregate polarization and growth of the lower tail of the US employment and earnings distributions between 1980 and 2005” (p.1589-1590).(Abstractor: Author)

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• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2013
• Author(s): Autor, David H.; Dorn, David
• Organizational Author(s): Massachusetts Institute of Technology; CEMFI, Madrid
• Funding Source: Funding source not identified
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Melissa Mack
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies