The anatomy of job polarisation in the UK

Andrea Salvatori

doi:10.1186/s12651-018-0242-z

Abstract

This paper studies the contribution of different skill groups to the polarisation of the UK labour market. We show that the large increase in graduate numbers contributed to the substantial reallocation of employment from middling to top occupations which is the main feature of the polarisation process in the UK over the past three decades. The increase in the number of immigrants, on the other hand, does not account for any particular aspect of the polarisation in the UK. Changes in the skill mix of the workforce account for most of the decline in routine employment across the occupational distribution, but within-group changes account for most of the decline in routine occupations in middling occupations. In addition, there is no clear indication of polarisation within all skill groups—a fact that previous literature has cited as evidence that technology drives the decline of middling occupations. These findings differ substantially from previous evidence on the US and cast doubts on the role of technology as the main driver of polarisation in the UK.

Highlights

The increasing ability of technology to replace workers in performing easier-to-codify “routine” tasks has been singled out in the literature as the main driver of “job polarisation”, i.e. the decline in the share of mid-pay mid-skill jobs observed in several developed countries (Autor 2014; Goos et al 2014)
They contributed − 28 pp to the change in the employment share of middling occupations, over half of which is explained by the decline in their relative number (15.5 pp)
Between 1979 and 2012, this shift has contributed to the loss of 12.7 pp in middling occupations which have been mostly reallocated to bottom occupations (11.6 pp)

Summary

Introduction

The increasing ability of technology to replace workers in performing easier-to-codify “routine” tasks has been singled out in the literature as the main driver of “job polarisation”, i.e. the decline in the share of mid-pay mid-skill jobs observed in several developed countries (Autor 2014; Goos et al 2014). The main evidence presented in this paper on the role of individual skill groups comes from a shift-share analysis which highlights the contribution to overall job polarisation of changes within and between gender-education-age-immigration cells from 1979 to 2009.

Results

Conclusion