We use an input-output model to examine the effects of trade and domestic consumption, technology and labor productivity on skilled and unskilled worker demand. We found that trade was not the major contributor to changes in demand for skilled and unskilled labor during 1972-92, counter to the continuing debate on the trade-widening wage gap linkage. We found that skill intensity, i.e. the ratio of high-skilled to low-skilled workers for exports compared with imports, exceeded one during 1972-92, but did not increase. We explore alternative definitions of skilled and unskilled, and find our results to be robust to these alternative definitions.Skill intensity of US trade, international trade impacts, skilled—unskilled wage gap,
In the spirit of the classic Davis-Goldberg study of agribusiness, a procedure is presented for estimating and estimates of employment and income originating in the US Food and Fiber System. The Food and Fiber System is on net a nearly wholly domestic based subsystem of the economy accounting for employment for 18.5% of the civilian workforce and a source for 18% of total gross national product.
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