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Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline, and Low-Skilled Immigration

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  • Gould, Eric

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the increasing ?residual wage inequality? trend is related to manufacturing decline and the influx of low-skilled immigrants. There is a vast literature arguing that technological change, international trade, and institutional factors have played a significant role in the inequality trend. However, most of the trend is unexplained by observable factors. This paper attempts to ?explain? the growth in the unexplained variance of wages by exploiting variation across locations (states or cities) in the United States in the local level of ?residual inequality.? The evidence shows that a shrinking manufacturing sector increases inequality. In addition, an influx of low-skilled immigrants increases inequality, but this effect is concentrated in areas with a steeper manufacturing decline. Similar results are found for two alternative measures linked to increasing inequality: the increasing return to education and the decline in the employment rate of non-college men. The overall evidence suggests that the manufacturing and immigration trends have hollowed-out the overall demand for middle-skilled workers in all sectors, while increasing the supply of workers in lower skilled jobs. Both phenomena are producing downward pressure on the relative wages of workers at the low end of the income distribution.

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  • Gould, Eric, 2015. "Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline, and Low-Skilled Immigration," CEPR Discussion Papers 10649, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10649
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    Cited by:

    1. Amior, Michael, 2020. "The contribution of immigration to local labor market adjustment," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108419, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Andrej Cupák & Pavel Ciaian & d'Artis Kancs, 2021. "Comparing the immigrant-native pay gap: A novel evidence from home and host countries," EERI Research Paper Series EERI RP 2021/05, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
    3. Gould, Eric, 2023. "The Return to College, Marriage, and Intergenerational Mobility," CEPR Discussion Papers 18566, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Kimberly Bayard & Tomaz Cajner & Vivi Gregorich & Maria D. Tito, 2022. "Are Manufacturing Jobs Still Good Jobs? An Exploration of the Manufacturing Wage Premium," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-011, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Andreas Beerli & Ronald Indergand & Johannes S. Kunz, 2023. "The supply of foreign talent: how skill-biased technology drives the location choice and skills of new immigrants," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 681-718, April.
    6. Karim Bekhtiar, 2023. "The decline of manufacturing employment and the rise of the far-right in Austria," Economics working papers 2023-09, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    7. Amior, Michael & Stuhler, Jan, 2023. "Immigration, Monopsony and the Distribution of Firm Pay," IZA Discussion Papers 16692, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Wenxiao Wang & Christopher Findlay & Shandre Thangavelu, 2021. "Trade, technology, and the labour market: impacts on wage inequality within countries," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 35(1), pages 19-35, May.
    9. Cristiano Antonelli & Gianluca Orsatti & Guido Pialli, 2023. "The knowledge-intensive direction of technological change," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 13(1), pages 1-27, March.
    10. Ayfer Ozyilmaz & Yuksel Bayraktar & Esme Isik & Metin Toprak & Mehmet Firat Olgun & Serdar Aydin & Tuncay Guloglu, 2022. "The Impact of Refugees on Income Inequality in Developing Countries by Using Quantile Regression, ANN, Fixed and Random Effect," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-16, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Low-skilled immigration; Manufacturing decline; Residual wage inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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