Routinization, within-occupation task changes and long-run employment dynamics

Abstract

The present study adds to the literature on routinization and employment by capturing within-occupation task changes over the period 1980-2010. The main contributions are the measurement of such changes and the combination of two data sources on occupational task content for the United States: the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET). We show that within-occupation reorientation away from routine tasks: i) accounts for 1/3 of the decline in routine-task use; ii) accelerated in the 1990s, decelerated in the 2000s but with significant convergence across occupations; and iii) allowed workers to escape the employment and wage decline, conditional on the initial level of routine-task intensity. The latter finding suggests that task reorientation is a key channel through which labour markets adapt to various forms of labour-saving technological change.

Keywords: Employment dynamics; Race between technology and education; Routinization; Tasks; Technological change.

Fig. 1

Convergence of RTI across occupations (OCC1990) Notes: Weights used in regressions are the product of Census (1980; 1990; 2000) and ACS (2010) sampling weights and annual hours of labour supply.

Fig. 2

Trend in employment share by initial quintile of RTI or Δ RTI Notes: Trends in the annual hours of labour supply multiplied by sampling weights by groups of occupations defined as quintiles of the weighted distribution of RTI (1980, top-left and bottom-left panels) and of RTI change (1980–2010, top-right and bottom-left panels).