Individual Consequences of Occupational Decline

101 Pages Posted: 8 Jul 2019

See all articles by Per-Anders Edin

Per-Anders Edin

Uppsala University - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Tiernan Evans

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE)

Georg Graetz

Uppsala University

Sofia Hernnäs

Uppsala University

Guy Michaels

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - London School of Economics

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Abstract

What are the earnings and employment losses that workers suffer when demand for their occupations declines? To answer this question we combine forecasts on occupational employment changes, which allow us to identify unanticipated declines; administrative data on the population of Swedish workers, spanning several decades; and a highly detailed occupational classification. We find that, compared to similar workers, those facing occupational decline lost about 2-5 percent of mean cumulative earnings from 1986-2013. But workers at the bottom of their occupations' initial earnings distributions suffered considerably larger losses. These earnings losses are partly accounted for by reduced employment, and increased unemployment and retraining.

Keywords: technological change, occupations, inequality

JEL Classification: O33, J24, J62

Suggested Citation

Edin, Per-Anders and Evans, Tiernan and Graetz, Georg and Hernnäs, Sofia and Michaels, Guy, Individual Consequences of Occupational Decline. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12434, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3415780 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3415780

Per-Anders Edin (Contact Author)

Uppsala University - Department of Economics ( email )

SE-75120 Uppsala
Sweden
+46 18 471 10 97/7 (Phone)
+46 18 471 70 78 (Fax)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

Tiernan Evans

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

Georg Graetz

Uppsala University ( email )

Box 513
Uppsala, 751 20
Sweden

Sofia Hernnäs

Uppsala University ( email )

Box 513
Uppsala, 751 20
Sweden

Guy Michaels

London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) - London School of Economics ( email )

United Kingdom

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