Using tools to distinguish general and occupation-specific skills

Abstract

Data on tool use from O*Net's Tools and Technologies Supplement can, in conjunction with task-based measures, provide a new proxy for measuring and distinguishing general and specific skills at the occupational level. The tools and types of tools used in an occupation generate reasonable proxies for skill that vary across occupations and appear to capture features of occupations that differ from and complement task-based proxies for skill. Wage regressions indicate that job-specific tools, which correspond to particular occupations, are associated with higher pay. Non-specific tools correlate to lower-paying sales, service and administrative occupations. which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.1 Gathmann and Schönberg (2010) show that a task-based measure of skills explains a significant proportion of wage growth and Autor and Handel (2013) find that the inclusion of job tasks significantly improves the explanatory power of a wage regression. Autor (2013) and Autor and Handel (2013) provide review of this literature, including numerous studies not discussed here.

The Effect of Health-Related Behaviors on Income in China: A Panel Data Analysis

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