The earnings of low-skill workers have suffered substantial declines since the mid 1970 s. The conventional explanation is that a technology-induced increase in skill requirements has resulted in a growing mismatch between the skills demanded by firms and those supplied by the workforce:...

The rapid growth in wage inequality and the rising incidence of low earnings in the 1980's can be traced in large part to the sharp decline in the real hourly wages of lowskill men. This paper examines alternative explanations for this wage collapse. A widely accepted story is that this collapse...

This paper compares U.S. and French performance with three indicators of employment performance designed to account of job quality, measured by the incidence of low wages and involuntary part-time employment. From each country’s main household survey for 1993-2005 by age, gender and education...

Generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment. The effects of benefit generosity are more ambiguous in a broader behavioral framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment controlling for income, and know...

This paper examines the effects of recent employment restructuring on young workers by race and sex. Detailed Census occupations are grouped into 10 job segments based on earnings, education and annual hours worked in 1979. Job segments in which young black men were most concentrated had the...

David R. Howell argues that the collapse of low-skill wages in the United States cannot be explained by a skill mismatch resulting from a technology-driven decline in the demand for low-skill labor. He presents evidence refuting the prevailing belief that a substantial shift in demand away from...