The Robustness of Job Polarization and the Growth of High-Skill Occupations

Abstract

The job polarization in the U S labor market has been widely discussed This paper uses the CPS-MORG data to examine the robustness of the polarization phenomena to different time periods and business cycles A special focus is on the high-skill occupations This paper investigates the structural characteristics of the high-skill occupations and also reveals the education effect on the wage increase of the high-skill jobs relative to low- and middle-skill occupations Based on the results the wage polarization is robust to both time periods and business cycles while the employment share polarization is very sensitive to both According to the counterfactual experiment the managers and professional occupations account for a large proportion of the employment share increase and almost all of the wage increase for the high skill occupations