In most industrialized countries, employment has grown predominately in jobs at the upper and lower tails of the wage distribution, while employment in the middle part of the distribution has stagnated or declined. This process of job polarization is well documented for a number of countries. We...

We analyze if technological progress and the change in the occupational structure have improved women's position in the labour market. We show that women increasingly work in non-routine manual and in interactive occupations. However, the observed narrowing of the gender wage gap is entirely...

This paper uses the task-based view of technological change to study employment and wage polarization at the level of local labor markets in Germany between 1979 and 2007. In order to directly relate technological change to subsequent employment trends, we exploit variation in the regional task...

We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in U.S. local labor markets between 1990 and 2007. Labor markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among...

After a decade in which wages and employment fell precipitously in low-skill occupations and expanded in high-skill occupations, the shape of U.S. earnings and job growth sharply polarized in the 1990s. Employment shares and relative earnings rose in both low and high-skill jobs, leading to a...