Offshoring, Mismatch, and Labor Market Outcomes

Abstract

We study the role of labor market mismatch in the adjustment to a trade liberalization that results in the offshoring of high-tech production. Our model features two-sided heterogeneity in the labor market: high- and low-skilled workers are matched in a frictional labor market with high- and low-tech firms. Mismatch employment occurs when high-skilled workers choose to accept a less desirable job in the low-tech industry. The main result is that perhaps counter-intuitively this type of job displacement is actually beneficial for the labor market in the country doing the offshoring. Mismatch allows the economy to reallocate domestic high-skilled labor across both high- and low-tech industries. In doing so, mismatch dampens both the increase in the aggregate unemployment rate and the decline in aggregate wages that come as a consequence of shifting domestic production abroad.