Gender Composition of Occupations and Earnings: Why Enter a Female Dominated Occupation?

Given the inverse relationship between the proportion of females employed in an occupation and earnings, why enter a female-dominated occupation? It has been argued that an individual’s total compensation from work is a combination of wage compensation plus non-pecuniary compensation associated with job characteristics, and when choosing an occupation, one selects the utility-maximizing combination of wages and job characteristics. Our findings support the theory that employee and job characteristics are rewarded differently in non-female dominated (NFD) and female dominated (FD) occupations, and that people choose occupations that reward their attributes more or penalize them less. Comparison of the variables significantly related to salary among FD occupations, NFD occupations and the full sample reveals that 9 of 13 variables significantly related to salary among NFD occupations are also significantly related to salary, with the same sign, among the full sample. However, none of these 13 variables is related to salary among FD occupations. This suggests that an individual’s labor force attributes are rewarded differently in FD occupations compared to NFD occupations and therefore any individual with a particular set of attributes can expect to be rewarded differently in a NFD occupation than in a FD occupation

Subject: Careers and Occupations

Compiled by Susan LaCette.Careers.pdf: 808 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

This Job Is 'Getting Old:' Measuring Changes in Job Opportunities Using Occupational Age Structure

High- and low-wage occupations are expanding rapidly relative to middle-wage occupations in both the U.S. and the E.U. We study the reallocation of workers from middle-skill occupations towards the tails of the occupational skill distribution by analyzing changes in age structure within and across occupations. Because occupations typically expand by hiring young workers and contract by curtailing such hiring, we posit that growing occupations will get younger while shrinking occupations will 'get old.' After verifying this proposition, we apply this observation to local labor markets in the U.S. to test whether markets that were specialized in middle-skilled occupations in 1980 saw a differential movement of both older and younger workers into occupations at the tails of the skill distribution over the subsequent 25 years. Consistent with aggregate trends, employment in initially middle-skill-intensive labor markets hollowed-out between 1980 and 2005. Employment losses among non-college workers in the middle of the occupational skill distribution were almost entirely countered by employment growth in lower-tail occupations. For college workers, employment losses at the middle were offset in roughly equal measures by gains in the upper- and lower-tails of the occupational skill distribution. But gains at the upper-tail were almost entirely limited to young college workers. Consequently, older college workers are increasingly found in lower-skill, lower-paying occupations.job polarization, occupational structure, age structure, local labor markets, technical change

Human Capital Depreciation during Family-related Career Interruptions in Male and Female Occupations

Human Capital Depreciation during Family-related Career Inter¬ruptions in Male and Female Occupations This study investigates the relation between human capital depreciation during family-related career interruptions and occupational choice of women in the (West) German labour market. In contrast to other studies that do not explicitly focus on family-related career interruptions, we find that short-term human capital depreciation during these career interruptions is significantly lower in female occupations than in male occupations. This holds for both high- and low-skilled occupations. Our findings support the self-selection hypothesis with respect to occupational sex segregation, i.e. women might deliberately choose female occupations because of lower short-term wage penalties for family-related career interruptions. Moreover, we find that particularly men employed in high-skilled male occupations face large short-run as well as long run wage penalties when they have a family related career break.education, training and the labour market;

Husbands’ job loss and wives’ labor force participation during economic downturns: are all recessions the same?

Earlier research showed an added-worker effect for wives when their husbands stopped working during the Great Recession (December 2007–June 2009) but not when husbands stopped working in recent years of prosperity (2004–2005). By including one recession per decade for the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, this article builds upon that research by using Current Population Survey data to compare wives’ labor force responses to their husbands stopping work across three recessions to determine whether wives’ employment responses during the Great Recession differed from those during earlier recessions. Additionally, we hypothesize motivations for wives entering the labor force and consider the occupations they enter. Across all three recessions included in this study, wives entered the labor force more often when their husband stopped working. More nuanced analyses show that during both the Great Recession and the 1990–1991 recession, wives were more likely to seek work and find a job if their husband became not employed, while in the 1981–1982 recession wives were more likely to seek work but less likely to find a job. We also find that wives who started a job during the Great Recession or the 1990–1991 recession were more likely to enter service occupations than professional or managerial occupations, but this was not the case during the 1981–1982 recession. Furthermore, during the three recessions, college-educated wives who started a job were more likely than wives with less education to enter professional and managerial occupations relative to service occupations or other occupations. However, these newly employed college-educated wives were somewhat more likely to enter service or other occupations than their college-educated counterparts who were employed continuously

The Low-Wage Recovery and Growing Inequality

This report updates NELP's previous analyses of job loss and job growth trends during and after the Great Recession. We find that:1. During the recession, employment losses occurred throughout the economy, but were concentrated in mid-wage occupations. By contrast, during the recovery, employment gains have been concentrated in lower wage occupations, which grew 2.7 times as fast as mid-wage and higher-wage occupations. 2. The lower-wage occupations that grew the most during the recovery include retail salespersons, food preparation workers, laborers and freight workers, waiters and waitresses, personal and home care aides, and office clerks and customer representatives.3. The unbalanced recession and recovery have meant that the long-term rise in inequality in the U.S. continues. The good jobs deficit is now deeper than it was at the start of the 21st century.4. Industry dynamics are playing an important role in shaping the unbalanced recovery. We find that three low-wage industries (food services, retail, and employment services) added 1.7 million jobs over the past two years, fully 43 percent of net employment growth. At the same time, better-paying industries (like construction; manufacturing; finance, insurance and real estate; and information) did not grow, or did not grow enough to make up for recession losses. Other better-paying industries (like professional and technical services) saw solid growth, but not in their mid-wage occupations. And steep cuts in state and local government have hit mid- and higher-wage occupations the hardest.In short, America's good jobs deficit continues. Policymakers have understandably been focused on the urgent goal of getting U.S. employment back to where it was before the recession (we are still missing nearly 10 million jobs), but our findings underscore that job quality is rapidly emerging as a second front in the struggling recovery

On the Sorting of Physicians across Medical Occupations

We model the sorting of medical students across medical occupations and identify a mechanism that explains the possibility of differential productivity across occupations. The model combines moral hazard and matching of physicians and occupations with pre-matching investments. In equilibrium assortative matching takes place; more able physicians join occupations less exposed to moral hazard risk, face more powerful performance incentives, and are more productive. Under-consumption of health services relative to the first best allocation increases with occupational (moral hazard) risk. Occupations with risk above a given threshold are not viable. The model offers an explanation for the persistence of distortions in the mix of health care services offered, the differential impact of malpractice risk across occupations, and the recent growth in medical specialization.performance measurement, moral hazard, incentives, matching, pre-matching investment, career choice, medical specialization

How General is Specific Human Capital? Using Mobility Patterns to Study Skill Transferability in the Labor Market

Previous studies assume that labor market skills are either fully general or specific to a firm. This paper uses patterns in mobility and wages to the transferability of specific skills across occupations. The empirical analysis combines information on tasks performed in different occupations with a large panel on complete work histories and wages. Our results demonstrate that labor market skills are partially transferable across occupations. We find that individuals move to occupations with similar task requirements, and that the distance of moves declines with time in the labor market. Further, tenure in the last occupation affects current wages, and the effect is stronger if the two occupations are similar. We calculate that task-specific human capital is an important source of wage growth, especially for university graduatesHuman Capital

Occupational mobility within and between skill clusters: an empirical analysis based on the skill-weights approach

This paper applies Lazear\u27s skill-weights approach (2009) to analyze the specificity of skill combinations of various occupations and its effects on occupational mobility and wages. The results show that the more specific an occupation, the smaller the probability of an occupational change. We also identify clusters of occupations characterized by similar skill combinations and find that employees in specific occupations have a comparatively higher probability of changing occupations within a skill cluster than between skill clusters. Moreover, occupational mobility within a skill cluster results in wage gains, while between clusters it results in wage losses. Therefore, the acquired skill combination and the resulting skill cluster, rather than the occupation per se, crucially determines mobility. Thus, for educational policies, it is more important to study whether a skill cluster is sustainable than an occupation. (DIPF/Orig.