Evolving Skills and Gender Gaps in the Labor Market.
Abstract
This paper examines how the rate of occupational skill change shapes career choices and long-run labor market outcomes. Drawing on job posting data, I construct a measure of occupational skill change that tracks how the distribution of required skills shifts over time. Using this measure, I find that faster changing occupations offer higher wages and longer working hours, and women are more likely to sort out of them. To interpret these patterns, I estimate a discrete choice model of occupational mobility in which workers value wages, hours, and the rate of skill change. The estimates quantify the compensating wage differential to enter high skill change jobs and show how differences in preferences and sorting contribute to occupational allocation. A decomposition of gender differences in labor market outcomes indicates that sorting with respect to skill change plays a meaningful role. Together, the findings highlight the importance of evolving skill requirements for human capital accumulation and gender inequality, providing new evidence on occupational choice and the returns to skills in a changing economy.
with Amanda Sonnega, Maymona Al-Hinai, Brooke Helppie-McFall, & Jacqui Smith
Innovation in Aging, Feburary 2024.
Abstract
Growing interest in the impact of lifetime occupational exposures on later-life health highlights the need to assess the quality of retrospective job history data. This study evaluated the accuracy of job history information collected retrospectively in the Life History Mail Survey (LHMS) with data collected contemporaneously in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Using LHMS data from 2015 and 2017, we compared self-reported work status to contemporaneous HRS core interview data from 1992 to 2016, focusing on jobs held at the time of interview, with limited comparisons of occupation and industry. Among respondents (mean age 74.7 years; 61.79% female; 82.12% white; 8.57% Hispanic), the work status match rate was 83%. Recall was less accurate for jobs held longer ago but more accurate for full-time, longer-duration, and fewer jobs. Higher conscientiousness and cognitive functioning were linked to greater recall accuracy. Occupation and industry match rates were 69% and 77%, respectively
Lifetime Patterns of Exposure to Job Complexity and Later Life Cognition.
with Joanne Hsu, Yun-Taek Oh, Jacqui Smith, & Amanda Sonnega
(draft coming soon)
with Dawn Carr, Rebekah Carpenter, Qiuchang (Katy) Cao, & Amanda Sonnega
University of Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center (MRDRC) Working Paper, July 2023, MRDRC WP 2023-466.
Abstract
Existing studies find that COVID-19 disproportionately affected the employment and financial security of minoritized workers. However, few studies have examined the employment and financial impact of COVID-19 among different groups of older workers. Furthermore, there is limited information on how pre- and post-COVID-19 financial precarity are associated. To address these gaps, we analyzed data from the 2016 and 2018 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), as well as the 2021 HRS Perspectives on the Pandemic mail-in survey, to evaluate racial differences in the consequences of COVID-19-related job disruption and financial precarity among workers 51 and older. Results indicate that non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic workers had higher rates of COVID-19-related job disruptions than their white counterparts. Further, non-Hispanic Black older workers were more likely to have stopped work due to illness than their white counterparts. Results also show that non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic older workers experienced more post-COVID-19 financial consequences than their white counterparts. Finally, analysis of interaction terms indicated that the association between pre-COVID-19 financial precarity status and post-COVID-19 financial precarity outcomes was dependent on race. Specifically, although pre-COVID-19 financial precarity was associated with significantly higher rates of post-COVID-19 precarity for all racial groups, white older workers without pre-COVID-19 precarity were uniquely protected from post-COVID-19 precarity, whereas Black and Hispanic older workers were likely to experience relatively high rates of post-COVID-19 precarity even in the absence of pre-COVID-19 precarity.
Linking Names and Addresses in TAA Petition Data with SSEL Data.
with Jagadeesh Sivadasan.
(forthcoming in CES Working Paper)
with Rebekah Carpenter, Dawn Carr, Adeeb Hafeez, Brooke Helppie-McFall, and Amanda Sonnega.
Version 1. Ann Arbor, MI. October 2022.
Description
This document describes a dataset that provides a linkage between measures and variables provided in “historical” databases of the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) with detailed 2000 Census occupational codes found in 2004-2010 restricted access Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data releases. Specifically, this project links detailed worker and occupational characteristics data taken from the O*NET 5.0 and 10.0 databases with detailed 2000 Census occupational codes found in restricted access HRS datasets for Core interview years 2004 to 2010.