Changes in Occupational Tasks and Their Association with Individual Wages and Occupational Mobility

• DOI: 10.1111/geer.12166
• Publication Date: 2018-06-04T06:56:01Z
• Authors: Alexandra Fedorets
• Keywords: ddc:330; 8. Economic growth; 0502 economics and business; 05 social sciences; J24; Human capital; J62; wage premium; occupational change; task-based approach

AbstractThis study provides novel evidence on the relevance of task content changes between and within occupations to wage dynamics of occupational changers and stayers. I use individual-level, cross-sectional data featuring tasks performed on the job to compute a measure of proximity of job contents. Then, I merge this measure to a large-scale panel survey to show that occupational changers experience a wage growth that is declining when the accompanying alterations in task contents are big. For occupational stayers, alterations in task contents generate a positive wage component, beyond tenure effect. However, the results are not robust with respect to the choice of proximity measure and over time.