This Job is 'Getting Old': Measuring Changes in Job Opportunities Using Occupational Age Structure

15 Pages Posted: 2 Feb 2009

See all articles by David H. Autor

David H. Autor

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

David Dorn

University of Zurich - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

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Abstract

High- and low-wage occupations are expanding rapidly relative to middle-wage occupations in both the U.S. and the E.U. We study the reallocation of workers from middle-skill occupations towards the tails of the occupational skill distribution by analyzing changes in age structure within and across occupations. Because occupations typically expand by hiring young workers and contract by curtailing such hiring, we posit that growing occupations will get younger while shrinking occupations will 'get old.' After verifying this proposition, we apply this observation to local labor markets in the U.S. to test whether markets that were specialized in middle-skilled occupations in 1980 saw a differential movement of both older and younger workers into occupations at the tails of the skill distribution over the subsequent 25 years. Consistent with aggregate trends, employment in initially middle-skill-intensive labor markets hollowed-out between 1980 and 2005. Employment losses among non-college workers in the middle of the occupational skill distribution were almost entirely countered by employment growth in lower-tail occupations. For college workers, employment losses at the middle were offset in roughly equal measures by gains in the upper- and lower-tails of the occupational skill distribution. But gains at the upper-tail were almost entirely limited to young college workers. Consequently, older college workers are increasingly found in lower-skill, lower-paying occupations.

Keywords: job polarization, occupational structure, age structure, local labor markets, technical change

JEL Classification: E24, J11, J21, J24

Suggested Citation

Autor, David H. and Dorn, David, This Job is 'Getting Old': Measuring Changes in Job Opportunities Using Occupational Age Structure. IZA Discussion Paper No. 3970, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1336087 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1336087

David H. Autor (Contact Author)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Department of Economics ( email )

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David Dorn

University of Zurich - Department of Economics ( email )

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Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

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IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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Bonn, D-53072
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) ( email )

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