Now I.T.’s “Personal”: Offshoring and the Shifting Skill Composition of the US Information Technology Workforce

We combine new offshoring and IT workforce micro-data to investigate how an increase in the offshore supply of IT workers has affected the composition of the US IT workforce. We find that at firms with offshore captive IT centers, the relative demand for onshore IT workers in occupations involving tasks that can be traded over computer networks, such as those requiring little personal communication or hands-on interaction with US-based objects, fell by about 8% over the last decade. By comparison, relative demand for workers in those occupations rose by about 3% in firms that were not offshoring. Our second finding is that hourly IT workers are more likely than full-time workers to be employed in occupations requiring tradable tasks, and that the relative demand for hourly IT workers is about 2-3% lower in offshoring firms. We discuss the implications of our findings for IT workers, policy makers, educators, and managers

Now IT\u27s Personal: Offshoring and the Shifting Skill Composition of the U.S. Information Technology Workforce

We combine new information technology (IT) offshoring and IT workforce microdata to investigate how the use of IT offshore captive centers is affecting the skill composition of the U.S. onshore IT workforce. The analysis is based on the theory that occupations involving tasks that are “tradable,” such as tasks that require little personal communication or hands-on interaction with U.S.-based objects, are vulnerable to being moved offshore. Consistent with this theory, we find that firms that have offshore IT captive centers have 8% less of their onshore IT workforce involved in tradable occupations; those without offshore captive centers have increased the proportion of onshore employment in these same occupations by 3%. In addition, we find that hourly IT workers (e.g., IT contractors) are disproportionately employed in tradable jobs, and their onshore employment is 2%–3% lower in firms with offshore captive centers. These findings persist after considering different measures of employment composition, including controls for human capital, firm performance, domestic outsourcing, and whether firms choose to build or buy software. Instrumental variables and corroborating regressions suggest that our estimates are conservative—the magnitude of the effect generally rises after accounting for reverse causality and measurement error

e-Skills: The International dimension and the Impact of Globalisation - Final Report 2014

In today’s increasingly knowledge-based economies, new information and communication technologies are a key engine for growth fuelled by the innovative ideas of highly - skilled workers. However, obtaining adequate quantities of employees with the necessary e-skills is a challenge. This is a growing international problem with many countries having an insufficient numbers of workers with the right e-Skills. For example: Australia: “Even though there’s 10,000 jobs a year created in IT, there are only 4500 students studying IT at university, and not all of them graduate” (Talevski and Osman, 2013). Brazil: “Brazil’s ICT sector requires about 78,000 [new] people by 2014. But, according to Brasscom, there are only 33,000 youths studying ICT related courses in the country” (Ammachchi, 2012). Canada: “It is widely acknowledged that it is becoming inc reasingly difficult to recruit for a variety of critical ICT occupations –from entry level to seasoned” (Ticoll and Nordicity, 2012). Europe: It is estimated that there will be an e-skills gap within Europe of up to 900,000 (main forecast scenario) ICT pr actitioners by 2020” (Empirica, 2014). Japan: It is reported that 80% of IT and user companies report an e-skills shortage (IPA, IT HR White Paper, 2013) United States: “Unlike the fiscal cliff where we are still peering over the edge, we careened over the “IT Skills Cliff” some years ago as our economy digitalized, mobilized and further “technologized”, and our IT skilled labour supply failed to keep up” (Miano, 2013)

Center for Economic Studies and Research Data Centers Research Report: 2013

Many individuals within and outside the Census Bureau contributed to this report. Randy Becker coordinated the production of this report and wrote, compiled, or edited its various parts. Matthew Graham and Robert Pitts authored Chapter 2, C.J. Krizan authored Chapter 3, and Lucia Foster, Todd Gardner, Christopher Goetz, Cheryl Grim, Henry Hyatt, Mark Kutzbach, Giordano Palloni, Kristin Sandusky, James Spletzer, and Alice Zawacki all contributed to Chapter 4. Brian Holly provided the material found in Appendix 3. Our RDC administrators and executive directors helped compile information found in Appendixes 2 and 6. Other CES staff contributed updates to the other appendixes. Linda Chen of the Census Bureau’s Center for New Media and Promotions and Donna Gillis of the Public Information Office provided publication management, graphics design and composition, and editorial review for print and electronic media. Benjamin Dunlap of the Census Bureau’s Administrative and Customer Services Division provided printing management.The Center for Economic Studies partners with stakeholders within and outside the U.S. Census Bureau to improve measures of the economy and people of the United States through research and innovative data products.Research summaries in this report have not undergone the review accorded Census Bureau publications and no endorsement should be inferred. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Census Bureau or other organizations. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed

Essays on the political economy of employment polarisation: global forces and domestic institutions

This thesis investigates the political economy of employment polarization focusing on the implications of this phenomenon along three main research fronts. The first paper follows a methodology which resembles closely the one adopted by Goos, Manning and Salomons (2014), however it further extends this framework by testing the joint effect of routinization and labour market institutions on employment structures. The evidence provided suggests that the claim of a pervasive technology-induced polarization should be revised in order to comprise a role for the institutional component. The second paper explores whether job polarization has a feedback effect on labour market institutions and policies, so that different degrees of polarization lead to different articulations of institutions at the domestic level, thus reinforcing or altering differences in national models across the European space. The analysis finds that the job polarization experienced by a particular country in the 5 years before a reform instance is consistently among the strongest predictors of reform activity, as significant as other drivers such as GDP growth and government net debt. Moreover, a higher degree of polarization tends to be associated with more deregulation and a decrease in the generosity of the policy measure. The empirical framework is also tested against more conventional taxonomies of welfare capitalism revealing that LMEs tend to harness job polarization dynamics whereas CMEs are incompatible with job polarization which destabilizes the system leading to an increased need for reforms. The final paper asks whether the U-shaped impact on the wage distribution predicted by the job polarization literature has actually materialized in Europe. The findings show that job polarization increased upper-tail inequality (90/50) and decreased lower-tail (50/10) inequality but that employment protection legislation restrained the wage effects

R&D and productivity in the US and the EU: sectoral specificities and differences in the crisis

Using data on the US and EU top R&D spenders from 2004 until 2012, this paper investigates the sources of the US/EU productivity gap. We find robust evidence that US firms have a higher capacity to translate R&D into productivity gains (especially in the high-tech macro sector), and this contributes to explaining the higher productivity of US firms. Conversely, EU firms are more likely to achieve productivity gains through capital-embodied technological change, at least in the medium- and low-tech macro sectors. Our results also show that the US/EU productivity gap has worsened during the crisis period, as the EU companies have been more affected by the economic crisis in their capacity to translate R&D investments into productivity. Based on these findings, we make a case for a learning-based and selective R&D funding, which, instead of purely aiming at stimulating higher R&D expenditures, works on improving the firms’ capabilities to transform R&D into productivity gains