Mapping job fitness and skill coherence into wages: an economic complexity analysis

Abstract

Leveraging the discrete skill and knowledge worker requirements of each occupation provided by O*NET, our empirical approach employs network-based tools from the Economic Complexity framework to characterize the US occupational network. This approach provides insights into the interplay between wages and the complexity or relatedness of the skill sets within each occupation, complementing conventional human capital frameworks. Our empirical strategy is threefold. First, we construct the Job and Skill Progression Networks, where nodes represent jobs (skills) and a link between two jobs (skills) indicates statistically significant co-occurrence of skills required to carry out those two jobs, that can be useful tools to identify job-switching paths and skill complementarities Second, by harnessing the Fitness and Complexity algorithm, we define a data-driven skill-based complexity measure of jobs that positively maps, but with interesting deviations, into wages and in the bottom–up and broad abstract/manual and routine/non-routine job characterisations, however providing a continuous and endogenous metric to assess the degree of complexity of each occupational skill-set. Third, building on relatedness and corporate coherence metrics, we introduce a measure of each job’s skill coherence, that negatively maps into wages. Our findings may inform policymakers and employers on designing more effective labour market policies and training schemes, that, rather than fostering hyper-specialization, should favor the acquisition of complex and “uncoherent” skill sets, enabling workers to more easily move throughout the job and skill progression networks and make informed career choices decisions while unlocking higher wage opportunities.