IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/0683.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Global Divergence in the De-routinization of Jobs

Author

Listed:
  • Lewandowski, Piotr

    (Institute for Structural Research)

  • Park, Albert

    (Asian Development Bank)

  • Schotte, Simone

    (United Nations–University World Institute for Development Economics Research)

Abstract

This study introduces a methodology to estimate the economy-specific task content of occupations across economies at different income levels. Combining these with employment data in 87 economies, the results show that occupations in low- and middle-income economies are more routine-intensive than in high-income economies, which is attributed to lower technology use in less-developed economies. Non-routine work continues to dominate in high-income economies while routine work remains in low-income and middle-income economies. These findings, using economy-specific estimates of occupational task content, contradict the assumption based on conventional measures that task content of occupations is converging globally. The finding of divergent trends in the relative routine intensity of work in developed and developing economies has important policy implications. Investment in skills, technology use, and participation in global value chains are key factors for work content and productivity to converge with those in high-income economies. The assumption that occupations are converging globally may also overestimate the role of routine-replacing technological change in explaining wage inequality in low- or middle-income economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Lewandowski, Piotr & Park, Albert & Schotte, Simone, 2023. "Global Divergence in the De-routinization of Jobs," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 683, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0683
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/publications/global-divergence-de-routinization-jobs
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Acemoglu, Daron & Autor, David, 2011. "Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 12, pages 1043-1171, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zuzanna Kowalik & Piotr Lewandowski & Tomasz Geodecki & Maciej Grodzicki, 2023. "Automation In Shared Service Centres: Implications For Skills And Autonomy In A Global Organisation," IBS Working Papers 08/2023, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schulte, Patrick, 2015. "Does skill-biased technical change diffuse internationally?," ZEW Discussion Papers 15-088, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    3. Tommaso AGASISTI & Geraint JOHNES & Marco PACCAGNELLA, 2021. "Tasks, occupations and wages in OECD countries," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 160(1), pages 85-112, March.
    4. Francesco Trebbi & Miao Ben Zhang, 2022. "The Cost of Regulatory Compliance in the United States," NBER Working Papers 30691, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Loebbing, Jonas, 2018. "An Elementary Theory of Endogenous Technical Change and Wage Inequality," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181603, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Keller, Elisa, 2019. "Labor supply and gender differences in occupational choice," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 221-241.
    7. Ellis Scharfenaker, Markus P.A. Schneider, 2019. "Labor Market Segmentation and the Distribution of Income: New Evidence from Internal Census Bureau Data," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2019_08, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    8. Bloom, Nicholas & Hassan, Tarek Alexander & Kalyani, Aakash & Lerner, Josh & Tahoun, Ahmed, 2021. "The diffusion of disruptive technologies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113870, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Davoine, Thomas & Mankart, Jochen, 2017. "Changes in education, wage inequality and working hours over time," Discussion Papers 38/2017, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    10. Rosario Crinò & Paolo Epifani, 2014. "Trade Imbalances, Export Structure and Wage Inequality," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(576), pages 507-539, May.
    11. Lewandowski, Piotr & Lipowska, Katarzyna & Smoter, Mateusz, 2023. "Mismatch in preferences for working from home: Evidence from discrete choice experiments with workers and employers," Ruhr Economic Papers 1026, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    12. Iftekhairul Islam & Fahad Shaon, 2020. "If the Prospect of Some Occupations Are Stagnating With Technological Advancement? A Task Attribute Approach to Detect Employment Vulnerability," Papers 2001.02783, arXiv.org.
    13. Pierre M. Picard & Alessandro Tampieri, 2016. "Income Effects and Vertical Differentiation in International Trade," DEM Discussion Paper Series 16-05, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    14. Boddin, Dominik & Henze, Philipp, 2015. "International trade and the occupational mix in manufacturing: Evidence from german micro data," Economics Working Papers 2015-05, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    15. John Carter Braxton & Kyle F. Herkenhoff & Jonathan Rothbaum & Lawrence Schmidt, 2021. "Changing Income Risk across the US Skill Distribution: Evidence from a Generalized Kalman Filter," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 55, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    16. repec:gdk:wpaper:51 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Francisco H G Ferreira & Sergio P Firpo & Julián Messina, 2022. "Labor Market Experience and Falling Earnings Inequality in Brazil: 1995–2012," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 36(1), pages 37-67.
    18. Franzini, Maurizio & Raitano, Michele, 2019. "Earnings inequality and workers’ skills in Italy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 215-224.
    19. David Hémous & Morten Olsen, 2022. "The Rise of the Machines: Automation, Horizontal Innovation, and Income Inequality," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 179-223, January.
    20. Battisti, Michele & Gatto, Massimo Del & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2022. "Skill-biased technical change and labor market inefficiency," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    21. Bo E. Honoré & Luojia Hu, 2023. "The COVID-19 pandemic and Asian American employment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(5), pages 2053-2083, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    occupational task content; routine-task intensity; skills; jobs divergence; wage inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0683. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.