Research

Abstract: Is long-term economic stress from occupational decline linked to poor health or death? Using Swedish administrative data matched with US occupational trends, I examine this in reduced form and using instrumental variables. Workers who in 1985 worked in occupations that subsequently, unexpectedly declined were more likely to die early than similar workers in non-declining occupations, with effect sizes of 6–19 percent of mean mortality. Cardiovascular deaths rose among men, while women faced higher mortality from alcohol, drugs, and suicide. Hospitalization days rose, as did prescription drug use for mental health and substance abuse. Effects were strongest for the lowest-paid.

Abstract:  Little is known about the physiological outcomes of unemployment during life. The aim of this study is to analyse if exposure to unemployment during different age periods can lead to metabolic syndrome (MetS) in middle-aged men and women. Can sensitive periods be identified? Data from the Northern Swedish Cohort was used, a longitudinal study of school leavers from 1981. Over the 40-year period, the retention rate was 90%. MetS at age 56 was measured with clinical examinations, while the exposure was measured with retrospective matrices between follow-ups. Exposure was cut into tertiles in each age group, the contribution to risk from each month of exposure was also analysed, using logistic regression. Short-term exposure to unemployment in early teens (<12 weeks) as well as long-term exposure to unemployment during life (>24 months) was related to MetS among women. In addition, exposure to unemployment >24 months during age 22–30 was related to MetS in adult life among both men and women. A significant dose–response was found among men and women in the ages 22–30 and among women in the whole age period. All results were controlled for socioeconomic status, obesity and drinking, used as time-dependent confounders. Our study showed that long-term exposure to unemployment during life can lead to MetS in adult age among women. Sensitive periods were identified in young age among both men and women. Our findings can be understood as a maladaptive response to chronic stress over life becoming embodied as MetS in adult life and calls for offensive, age-adjusted gender-sensitive interventions on the labour market. 

Abstract: We assess the career earnings losses that individual Swedish workers suffered when their occupations’ employment declined. High-quality data allow us to overcome sorting into declining occupations on various attributes, including cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Our estimates show that occupational decline reduced mean cumulative earnings from 1986–2013 by no more than 2%–5%. This loss reflects a combination of reduced earnings conditional on employment, reduced years of employment and increased time spent in unemployment and retraining. While on average workers successfully mitigated their losses, those initially at the bottom of their occupations’ earnings distributions lost up to 8%–11%. 

Abstract: Automation affects workers because it affects the return to their skills when performing different tasks. We propose a general equilibrium model of occupational choice and technological change which takes two important labor market features into account: (i) automation happens to tasks and (ii) workers have bundled skills. Equilibrium skill returns vary across tasks, and the impact of automation on skill returns is task-specific. In equilibrium, automation reduces employment in the task subjected to automation so long as tasks are gross complements. This reduction in employment increases both tasks' intensity in the skill used intensively in the automated task. This increased intensity is coupled with a universal decline in the return to the skill used intensively in the automated task.  Conversely, the return to the other skill increases in both tasks. We calibrate the model to match the Swedish economy in 1996 to explore the subsequent development of skill returns, employment and skill composition.