Abstract
The change of tasks in occupations is of interest to economic and sociological research from three perspectives. The task-based technological change approach describes tasks as the link between capital input and labor demand. In human capital theory, tasks are used to distinguish between general and specific human capital. Moreover, in institutional economics or sociology, it is argued that the specificity of occupations influences the marketability of the corresponding skills and tasks. However, data sources that illustrate task change within occupations are rare. The objective of this paper is therefore to introduce a task panel, which is created based on 16 cross-sectional surveys from between 1973 and 2011 of the German microcensus (Labor-Force-Survey), as an additional source to monitor task change. I present and discuss the harmonization method for eleven main activities that are exercised by the incumbents of the occupation within 176 occupational groups. To demonstrate the research potential of this novel data source, I develop an alternative theoretical view on the task-technology framework and classify the harmonized tasks according to their relationship to technological inventions in the third industrial (micro-electronic) revolution (technologically replaceable, technology-accompanying, technology-complementary and technologically neutral). Matching the task panel to an already existing Occupational Panel (OccPan) for Western Germany from 1976 to 2010, I can use fixed-effect regressions to show that changes of tasks within occupations correspond with theoretical expectations regarding the median wage growth of an occupation. The task panel can be matched to any data set containing a German classification of occupations from 1975, 1988 or 1992 to investigate further effects of task change on individual labor market success.
Highlights
The search for reasons behind and consequences of a changing demand for tasks in the workplace over time has become more prominent in the research of economists and sociologists in recent years
The objective of this paper is to introduce a task panel, which is created based on the German microcensus, the largest household survey in Germany, as an additional data source to monitor task change between 1973 and 2011
I will disclose how the task information in different survey years can be harmonized at an occupational level, discuss the attendant benefits and shortcomings, and demonstrate the research potential of the newly created task panel, which is openly accessible for academic research
Summary
The search for reasons behind and consequences of a changing demand for tasks in the workplace over time has become more prominent in the research of economists and sociologists in recent years. The employment surveys of the Federal Institute for Vocational Training and Training (BIBB) in cooperation with the Institute of Employment Research (IAB) in 1979, 1985/86, and 1991/1992 or the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) in 1998/99, 2006 and 2012 measure a wide range of tasks over time They are often used to either analyze the effects of tasks and wages directly (Antonczyk et al 2009; Spitz-Oener 2006) or to calculate skill profiles for occupations, which are matched to panel data sets (Black and Spitz-Oener 2010; Gathmann and Schönberg 2010). The main criticism of the German BIBB/IAB and BIBB/ BAuA employment studies is that only occupation-specific task bundles of employed persons are captured, and these task bundles somehow unequally reflect the activities exercised in occupations (Christoph et al 2020; Matthes et al 2014) Due to this question design, the conceptual framework of ALM, which is mainly based on generic skills/tasks, cannot be a fit (Matthes et al 2014).
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