Trends in the Growth and Distribution of Skills in the U.S. Workplace, 1960-1985

Howell, David; Wolff, Edward N.

doi:10.2307/2524157

Cited by 49 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A related literature classifies occupations by skills and examines the wages and employment changes for work thus classified (see, e.g., Howell and Wolff, 1991). These studies also find considerable support for the view that relative demand is shifting toward cognitive and interpersonal interaction skills.…”

Section: Aggregate Data Suggest It Is Behind the Labor Demand Shiftsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Information Technology, Workplace Organization and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence

1999

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Technology, wage inequality and the demand for skilled laborOver the past two decades, wage inequality has grown significantly in the UnitedStates. The total effect has been large, as the gap between wages at the 75th percentile of the distribution and the 25th has increased by nearly 50 percentage points. 1 The total effect has also been widespread, shifting relative wages in the top, middle, and bottom of the income distribution. The main cause of the growth in inequality appears to be a shift in the demand for workers of different kinds. Demand is growing for workers with exceptional talent, training, autonomy, and management ability much faster than for workers in low and middle-wage occupations.Parts of this shift in labor demand are explained by such broader economic patterns as globalization, sectoral shifts in employment and changes in labor marketinstitutions. Yet these forces appear too small to explain the breadth and depth of the shift, leaving a large residual shift (Krugman and Lawrence, 1993). Economists have concluded that this residual must reflect a "skill-biased technical change" in the way goods and services are produced in the economy (Griliches, 1969;Berndt, Morrison and Rosenblum, 1992;Berman, Bound and Griliches, 1994). The nature of this technical change are still not well-understood, but its size, breadth, and timing have led many observers to link it to the largest and most widespread technical change of the current era, information technology (see, e.g., Autor, Katz, and Krueger, 1997 and references therein).In this paper, we examine the firm-level evidence for a specific theory of how information technology (IT) could cause skill-biased technical change. In particular, we argue that the effects of IT on labor demand involve far more than simple automation and substitution. Instead, we highlight the central role of IT-enabled organizational change in

show abstract

Section: Aggregate Data Suggest It Is Behind the Labor Demand Shiftsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Information Technology, Workplace Organization and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence

1999

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Most of these studies use the Dictionary of Occupational Titles to analyze how skill requirements of jobs in the U.S. have changed in the last decades (see Autor et al, (2001), Rumberger (1981), Howell and Wolff (1991), and Wolff (2000)). …”

Section: Technology Skills and Education In The Workplacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These skill categories have been identified as being particularly important in modern work environments (e.g. Autor et al (2001), Green et al (2001), Howell andWolff (1991), andStasz (1997)). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

IT Capital, Job Content and Educational Attainment

Spitz¹

2003

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Die Discussion Papers dienen einer möglichst schnellen Verbreitung von neueren Forschungsarbeiten des ZEW. Die Beiträge liegen in alleiniger Verantwortung der Autoren und stellen nicht notwendigerweise die Meinung des ZEW dar.Discussion Papers are intended to make results of ZEW research promptly available to other economists in order to encourage discussion and suggestions for revisions. The authors are solely responsible for the contents which do not necessarily represent the opinion of the ZEW.Download this ZEW Discussion Paper from our ftp server:ftp://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp0304.pdfDas Papier entstand im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts "Informationstechnologien, Arbeitsplatzorganisation und qualifikatorische Lohnstruktur" im Auftrag der Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg.The paper was written as part of the research project "ICT, Work Organization, and Wages Across and Within Skill Groups" commissioned by the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg foundation. Non-technical SummaryThe impact of technological change on the labor market has always been a major concern of economic research. The discussion even intensified in the last two decades due to the fast diffusion of personal computers at workplaces, and due to the empirical evidence that workers with high levels of education are more likely to use computer technology. This led to the hypothesis that information technologies are skill-biased, implying the labor demand to shift towards employees with higher educational attainment. The analysis is based on a large data set of employees, covering four points in time, 1979, 1984/85, 1991/92, and 1998/99. The data set contains detailed information on the tasks that employees actually perform on-the-job, the technology they use, as well as on the educational attainment of employees. IT Capital, Job Content and Educational AttainmentAlexandra SpitzCentre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim Januar 2003Abstract Based on a large data set containing information on occupations between 1979 and 1999, this study explores the "black box" surrounding the skill-biased technological change hypothesis by analyzing the mechanisms that induce information technologies to be complementary to employees with higher skill levels. Using direct, multidimensional measures of occupational skill requirements, the analysis shows that IT capital substitutes repetitive manual and repetitive cognitive skills, whereas it complements analytical and interactive skills. These changes in the within occupational task mix result in an increased deployment of employees with high levels of education who have comparative advantages in performing non-repetitive cognitive tasks.

show abstract

“…Ed Wolff and I attempted to fill this gap by developing a number of measures of new technology, such as the value of computer purchases per dollar of output, the share of new investment in total capital stock, and the share of engineers in the total workforce, to help explain changes in skill requirements among industries. We measured skills with both indices of cognitive, interactive and motor skill job requirements from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles as well as the shares of five large occupation groups in total employment (Howell and Wolff, 1992).…”

Section: Skill Mismatch -A Preliminary Assessment Of the Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…-14-technologies and corporate restructuring have made large numbers of middle-level managers redundant (see Howell and Wolff, 1992). Kuster's (1993) case study of the commercial banking industry found, for example, that between 1987 and 1990 there was a 13 percent decline (from 45,000 to 39,000) in general managers, a decline from 2.9 percent to 2.5 percent of total industry employment.…”

Section: Skill Mismatch -A Preliminary Assessment Of the Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Technological Change and the Demand for Skills in the 1980s: Does Skill Mismatch Explain the Growth of Low Earnings?

Howell

1999

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Trends in the Growth and Distribution of Skills in the U.S. Workplace, 1960-1985

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

Information Technology, Workplace Organization and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence

Information Technology, Workplace Organization and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence

IT Capital, Job Content and Educational Attainment

Technological Change and the Demand for Skills in the 1980s: Does Skill Mismatch Explain the Growth of Low Earnings?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About