The" end of men" and rise of women in the high-skilled labor market
The" end of men" and rise of women in the high-skilled labor market
Author: Guido Matias Cortes
Author: Nir Jaimovich
Author: Henry E. Siu
Abstract: We document a new finding regarding changes in labor market outcomes for high-skilled men and women in the US. Since 1980, conditional on being a college-educated man, the probability of working in a cognitive/high-wage occupation has fallen. This contrasts starkly with the experience for college-educated women: their probability of working in these occupations rose, despite a much larger increase in the supply of educated women relative to men. We show that one key channel capable of rationalizing these findings is a greater increase in the demand for female-oriented skills in cognitive/high-wage occupations relative to other occupations. Using occupation-level data, we find evidence that this relative increase in the demand for female skills is due to an increasing importance of social skills within such occupations. Evidence from both male and female wages is also indicative of an increase in the demand for social skills. Finally, we document how these patterns change across the early and latter portions of the period.
Date 2018
Institution National Bureau of Economic Research
Reading Notes:
Objective: To describe the change in the labor market for high skilled men and women and explore the role of changes in demand for social skills in that change
Importance: The share of high-skilled men getting “good jobs” (ie high wage & cognitive) has fallen since 1980 and the share of high-skilled women getting “good jobs” has risen. This has not yet been thoroughly described or explained
Background: Evidence from psychology and neuroscience indicate that women have a comparative advantage in social and interpersonal skills. If high-skill jobs are increasingly demanding these skills as well, it could explain the change in gender distribution in good jobs
Data & Key Variables:
1980 Census 5% sample
2016 ACS
O*NET
Newspaper job ads from 1940-2000, collected by Atalay et al (2018)
Methodology: I think they are essentially doing a series of decompositions, though they don’t explicitly define them that way
Results: The increase in female share in “good jobs” appears to be due to the increased demand for social skills in these jobs
Key Table/Figure:
