IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/00087.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Industrial and Occupational Employment Changes During the Great Recession

Author

Listed:
  • Sangmin Aum
  • Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee
  • Yongseok Shin

Abstract

The U.S. labor market contracted sharply during the Great Recession. The ensuing recovery has been sluggish and by some measures still incomplete. In this paper, we break down aggregate employment during the Recession and the recovery into changes across industries and occupations. There is a clear asymmetric pattern: The contraction is driven by sectors and the recovery by occupations. In particular, the contraction between 2008 and 2010 primarily reflects a steep decline in construction employment, partially mitigated by expansions in the food services, education, and health industries. The recovery first came from a gradual increase in low-skill occupation employment across all sectors but after 2012 from a pronounced increase in high-skill occupation employment across all sectors. This pattern of recovery is a continuation of the underlying trend of polarization across occupations, which commenced in the 1980s.

Suggested Citation

  • Sangmin Aum & Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee & Yongseok Shin, 2017. "Industrial and Occupational Employment Changes During the Great Recession," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 99(4), pages 307-317.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:00087
    DOI: 10.20955/r.2017.307-317
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.20955/r.2017.307-317
    File Function: https://doi.org/10.20955/r.2017.307-317
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/2017/10/05/industrial-and-occupational-employment-changes-during-the-great-recession.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20955/r.2017.307-317?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shim, Myungkyu & Yang, Hee-Seung, 2016. "New stylized facts on occupational employment and their implications: Evidence from consistent employment data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 402-415.
    2. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    3. Christopher L. Foote & Richard W. Ryan, 2015. "Labor-Market Polarization over the Business Cycle," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 371-413.
    4. Lee, Tim & Shin, Yongseok, 2017. "Horizonatal and Vertical Polarization: Task-Specific Technological Change in a Multi-Sector Economy," TSE Working Papers 17-800, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    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. Jane E. Ihrig & Edward Kim & Cindy M. Vojtech & Gretchen C. Weinbach, 2019. "How Have Banks Been Managing the Composition of High-Quality Liquid Assets?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3).
    2. Aum, Sangmin & Lee, Sang Yoon (Tim) & Shin, Yongseok, 2018. "Computerizing industries and routinizing jobs: Explaining trends in aggregate productivity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-21.
    3. Dain Lee & Jinhyeok Park & Yongseok Shin, 2024. "Where Are the Workers? From Great Resignation to Quiet Quitting," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 106(1), pages 59-71, January.
    4. Julieta Caunedo & Elisa Keller & Yongseok Shin, 2023. "Technology and the Task Content of Jobs across the Development Spectrum," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 37(3), pages 479-493.
    5. Yongseok Shin & C. Y. Kelvin Yuen, 2019. "Occupational Mobility and Lifetime Earnings," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3).
    6. Rodolfo E. Manuelli, 2019. "What Determines Debt Maturity?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3), pages 155-176.
    7. Simon Firestone & Amy Lorenc & Ben Ranish, 2019. "An Empirical Economic Assessment of the Costs and Benefits of Bank Capital in the United States," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 101(3).

    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. Yongseok Shin & Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee & Sangmin Aum, 2017. "Waxing Jobs and Waning Industries," 2017 Meeting Papers 1618, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Sébastien Bock & Idriss Fontaine, 2020. "Routine-Biased Technological Change and Hours Worked over the Business Cycle," PSE Working Papers halshs-02982145, HAL.
    3. Maya Eden & Paul Gaggl, 2018. "On the Welfare Implications of Automation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 29, pages 15-43, July.
    4. Bárány, Zsófia L. & Siegel, Christian, 2020. "Biased technological change and employment reallocation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    5. Maximiliano Dvorkin & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2019. "Occupation Mobility, Human Capital and the Aggregate Consequences of Task-Biased Innovations," Working Papers 2019-064, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    6. Diego A. Comin & Ana Danieli & Martí Mestieri, 2020. "Income-driven Labor Market Polarization," NBER Working Papers 27455, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Andrew L. Kun & Raffaella Sadun & Orit Shaer & Thomaz Teodorovicz, 2022. "Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to access current and future uses," CEP Discussion Papers dp1841, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    8. Antonio Martins-Neto & Nanditha Mathew & Pierre Mohnen & Tania Treibich, 2024. "Is There Job Polarization in Developing Economies? A Review and Outlook," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 39(2), pages 259-288.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo, 2018. "Low-Skill and High-Skill Automation," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(2), pages 204-232.
    10. Carlos Carrillo-Tudela & Bart Hobijn & Powen She & Ludo Visschers, 2014. "The Extent and Cyclicality of Career Changes: Evidence for the UK (first version)," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 246, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    11. Pena, Werner & Siegel, Christian, 2023. "Routine-biased technical change, structure of employment, and cross-country income differences," CEPR Discussion Papers 18366, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Brad Hershbein & Lisa B. Kahn, 2018. "Do Recessions Accelerate Routine-Biased Technological Change? Evidence from Vacancy Postings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1737-1772, July.
    13. Zsofia Barany & Christian Siegel, 2021. "Engines of sectoral labor productivity growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 39, pages 304-343, January.
    14. Carrillo-Tudela, Carlos & Hobijn, Bart & She, Powen & Visschers, Ludo, 2016. "The extent and cyclicality of career changes: Evidence for the U.K," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 18-41.
    15. Christian Bredemeier & Falko Juessen & Roland Winkler, 2020. "Fiscal Policy and Occupational Employment Dynamics," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(6), pages 1527-1563, September.
    16. Gaggl, Paul & Kaufmann, Sylvia, 2020. "The cyclical component of labor market polarization and jobless recoveries in the US," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 334-347.
    17. Barany, Zsofia L. & Siegel, Christian, 2017. "Disentangling Occupation- and Sector-specific Technological Change," Economics Series 331, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7vl4otetog8c6aaomlbfjid6fp is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Nazareno, Luísa & Schiff, Daniel S., 2021. "The impact of automation and artificial intelligence on worker well-being," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    20. Jennifer Hunt & Ryan Nunn, 2019. "Is Employment Polarization Informative About Wage Inequality and Is Employment Really Polarizing?," NBER Working Papers 26064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Shim, Myungkyu & Yang, Hee-Seung, 2018. "Interindustry wage differentials, technology adoption, and job polarization," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 141-160.

    More about this item

    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:fip:fedlrv:00087. 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: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.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.