That Was then, this is Now: Skills and Routinization in the 2000s.

Abstract

Abstract:We analyze changes in the skill content of occupations in US four-digit manufacturing industries between 1999 and 2010. Following a 'task-based' approach, we elaborate a measure of non-routine skill intensity that captures the effects of industry exposure to both technology and international trade. The paper adds to previous literature by focusing on both the determinants of demand for non-routine skills and their effects on industry productivity and wages. The key finding is that import competition from low-wage countries has been a strong driver of demand for non-routine skills during the 2000s. Both technology and trade with low-wage countries are associated with mild cross-industry convergence in skill intensity, while trade with high-and medium-wage countries are at the root of persistent heterogeneity across occupational groups. We also find that higher nonroutine skill intensity has had, at best, a modest effect on productivity and wages, except in high-skill occupations.

Global Structural Change and Value Chains in Services. A Reappraisal

“…Firms would be more prone to offshore routinized rather than non-routinized tasks, because non-routinized tasks depend on tacit knowledge and are more costly to offshore (Autor, Levy and Murnane, 2003;Vona and Consoli 2014). 4 4 Consoli, Rentocchini and Vona (2015) build on the task-based approach developed by Autor, Levy and Murnane, (2003) and empirically test competing explanations of the demand for non-routinized skills over the past decade. They find that technologyin particular, information and communication technology-is less of a driver of the demand for non-routinized skills now than it was in the 1990s.…”

“…5 While most of the literature based on the trade-in-task framework consists of models, 6 the collection of empirical evidence on tasks remains a challenge. So far efforts are mainly confined to the United States, where task data have been derived by matching the Current Population Survey with the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (Autor, Levy and Murnane, 2003;Autor and Dorn, 2013;Consoli, Rentocchini and Vona, 2015). Similar data in Europe have only recently been collected.…”

Digital technologies and the nature and routine intensity of work: Evidence from Hungarian manufacturing subsidiaries

“…1. One explanation is that country-level routine intensity is influenced by globalisation, specifically by the movement of routine-intensive activities to locations characterised by a relatively low wage level (Consoli et al 2016;Goos et al 2014;Hardy et al 2018). In contrast, Cortes and Morris (2018) found that the number of routine-intensive manual jobs has declined in Mexico, a key offshoring destination of US companies.…”