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Title: The Impacts of Technology and Material O shoring on Di erent Labor Categories: An Analysis Using Microlevel Data

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2011

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Abstract: Over the 1980s, demand for labor in manufacturing shifted away from production labor tonon production labor even though the relative wage of non production labor increased. In the1990s, this shift ceased. While labor economists usually emphasize skilled-biased technologicalchanges to explain the shift, trade economists focus on trade in intermediate goods, i.e. materialo shoring. This paper is an investigation using micro-data of the relative role for technologyvs. material o shoring for the changing distribution of labor types in the United States manufacturingsector. First, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), which has censusextracts for the United States, veri es the labor shifts using more detailed occupational data.The occupational data reveal more information than the simplistic production/non-productiondivision. The share of middle-wage jobs continued to decrease during 1990s, which cannot beseen from the broad labor categorization. Second, in this paper, I use information on workereducation and occupation in order to disaggregate manufacturing labor into more categories.These are high school drop outs, high school graduates, some college and college graduates foreducational analysis. Educational attainment suggests that high school drop-outs have beennegatively a ected by a common trend apparent in all industries. Technology substitutes highschool graduates but complements college graduates. O shoring a ects high school graduatesand some college, who are in the middle of wage distribution, negatively; college graduatespositively. Third, the educational analysis does not have any information about occupationcharacteristics. Therefore, I divide occupations into three groups: routine, semi-routine andnon-routine occupations. Each of these is also divided into two: o shorable vs non-o shorableoccupations. This paper shows that routine occupations are negatively a ected by technology.Routine-o shorable occupations are additionally under the inuence of o shoring. The two negativee ects on routine o shorable occupation coincides with decreasing share of middle-wagegroup, which suggest that routine o horable occupations are concentrated in the middle class.Technology and o shoring complements non-routine occupations.

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Authors: Civril, Deniz

Conference Name: 10th Annual GEP Postgraduate Conference

Publisher Location: Nottingham, England

Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

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