TY  - JOUR
AU  - Katz, Lawrence F
AU  - Margo, Robert A
TI  - Technical Change and the Relative Demand for Skilled Labor: The United States in Historical Perspective
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18752
PY  - 2013
Y2  - February 2013
DO  - 10.3386/w18752
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18752
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18752.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Lawrence F. Katz
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-5148
Fax: 617/613-1245
E-Mail: lkatz@harvard.edu

Robert A. Margo
Department of Economics
Boston University
270 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 617/353-6819
Fax: 617/343-8495
E-Mail: margora@bu.edu
M1  - published as Lawrence F. Katz, Robert A. Margo. "Technical Change and the Relative Demand for Skilled Labor: The United States in Historical Perspective," in Leah Platt Boustan, Carola Frydman, and Robert A. Margo, editors, "Human Capital in History: The American Record" University of Chicago Press (2014)

AB  - This paper examines shifts over time in the relative demand for skilled labor in the United States.  Although de-skilling in the conventional sense did occur overall in nineteenth century manufacturing, a more nuanced picture is that occupations "hollowed out":  the share of "middle-skill" jobs - artisans - declined while those of "high-skill" - white collar, non-production workers - and "low-skill" - operatives and laborers increased.  De-skilling did not occur in the aggregate economy; rather, the aggregate shares of low skill jobs decreased, middle skill jobs remained steady, and high skill jobs expanded from 1850 to the early twentieth century.   The pattern of monotonic skill upgrading continued through much of the twentieth century until the recent "polarization" of labor demand since the late 1980s.  New archival evidence on wages suggests that the demand for high skill (white collar) workers grew more rapidly than the supply starting well before the Civil War.
ER  -