IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v31y2017i1p153-165.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An old model of social class? Job characteristics and the NS-SEC schema

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Williams

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the job characteristics underlying the Goldthorpe model of social class (work monitoring difficulty and human asset specificity) and those underlying theories of technological change (routine and analytical tasks) highlighted as key drivers for growing inequality. Analysis of the 2012 British Skills and Employment Survey demonstrates monitoring difficulty and asset specificity predict National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) membership and employment relations in ways expected by the Goldthorpe model, but the role of asset specificity is partially confounded by analytical tasks. It concludes that while the Goldthorpe model continues to provide a useful descriptive tool of inequality-producing processes and employment relations in the labour market, examining underlying job characteristics directly is a promising avenue for future research in understanding over time dynamics in the evolution of occupational inequalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Williams, 2017. "An old model of social class? Job characteristics and the NS-SEC schema," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(1), pages 153-165, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:31:y:2017:i:1:p:153-165
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017016653087
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017016653087
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017016653087?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. David H. Autor & Michael J. Handel, 2013. "Putting Tasks to the Test: Human Capital, Job Tasks, and Wages," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(S1), pages 59-96.
    2. 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.
    3. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning, 2007. "Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 118-133, February.
    4. Oesch, Daniel, 2013. "Occupational Change in Europe: How Technology and Education Transform the Job Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199680962.
    5. McGovern, Patrick & Hill, Stephen & Mills, Colin & White, Michael, 2007. "Market, Class, and Employment," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199213382.
    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. Sauer, Robert M. & Wilson, John & Mantovan, Noemi, 2019. "The Economic Benefits of Volunteering and Social Class," IZA Discussion Papers 12713, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    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. Silvia Vannutelli & Sergio Scicchitano & Marco Biagetti, 2022. "Routine-biased technological change and wage inequality: do workers’ perceptions matter?," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 12(3), pages 409-450, September.
    2. Dirk Antonczyk & Thomas DeLeire & Bernd Fitzenberger, 2018. "Polarization and Rising Wage Inequality: Comparing the U.S. and Germany," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-33, April.
    3. David J. Deming, 2017. "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1593-1640.
    4. Goos, Maarten & Rademakers, Emilie & Röttger, Ronja, 2021. "Routine-Biased technical change: Individual-Level evidence from a plant closure," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(7).
    5. Leonardo Gasparini & Irene Brambilla & Guillermo Falcone & Carlo Lombardo & Andrés César, 2021. "Routinization and Employment: Evidence for Latin America," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0276, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    6. 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.
    7. Francis Green, 2012. "Employee Involvement, Technology and Evolution in Job Skills: A Task-Based Analysis," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(1), pages 36-67, January.
    8. Consoli, Davide & Marin, Giovanni & Rentocchini, Francesco & Vona, Francesco, 2023. "Routinization, within-occupation task changes and long-run employment dynamics," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    9. Laffineur, Catherine & Gazaniol, Alexandre, 2019. "Foreign direct investment and wage dispersion: Evidence from French employer-employee data," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 203-226.
    10. Autor, David H., 2013. "The "task approach" to labor markets : an overview," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 46(3), pages 185-199.
    11. Wenchao Jin, 2022. "Occupational polarisation and endogenous task-biased technical change," Working Paper Series 0622, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    12. Elizabeth J. Casabianca & Alessia Lo Turco & Claudia Pigini, 2019. "Import penetration and returns to tasks: recent evidence from the Peruvian labour market," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 551-617, February.
    13. Lordan, Grace & Stringer, Eliza-Jane, 2022. "People versus machines: The impact of being in an automatable job on Australian worker’s mental health and life satisfaction," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    14. Beckert, Bernd & Buschak, Daniela & Graf, Birgit & Hägele, Martin & Jäger, Angela & Moll, Cornelius & Schmoch, Ulrich & Wydra, Sven, 2016. "Automatisierung und Robotik-Systeme," Studien zum deutschen Innovationssystem 11-2016, Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI) - Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation, Berlin.
    15. Cindy M. Cunningham & Robert D. Mohr, 2019. "Using tools to distinguish general and occupation-specific skills," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 53(1), pages 1-11, December.
    16. Dengler, Katharina & Matthes, Britta, 2018. "The impacts of digital transformation on the labour market: Substitution potentials of occupations in Germany," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 304-316.
    17. Andrea Salvatori, 2018. "The anatomy of job polarisation in the UK," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 52(1), pages 1-15, December.
    18. Maarten Goos & Melanie Arntz & Ulrich Zierahn & Terry Gregory & Stephanie Carretero Gomez & Ignacio Gonzalez Vazquez & Koen Jonkers, 2019. "The Impact of Technological Innovation on the Future of Work," JRC Working Papers on Labour, Education and Technology 2019-03, Joint Research Centre.
    19. Dengler, Katharina & Matthes, Britta, 2015. "Folgen der Digitalisierung für die Arbeitswelt : Substituierbarkeitspotenziale von Berufen in Deutschland," IAB-Forschungsbericht 201511, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    20. Ljubica Nedelkoska & Frank Neffke, 2019. "Skill Mismatch and Skill Transferability: Review of Concepts and Measurements," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1921, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Jun 2019.

    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:sae:woemps:v:31:y:2017:i:1:p:153-165. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    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.