Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/229235 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2020/11
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
The decline of employment in middle-wage, routine task intensive jobs has been well documented for the USA. Increased offshoring towards lower-income countries such as Mexico has been proposed as a potential driver of this decline. Our analysis provides a unique and new approach to address the question of whether trade and offshoring have impacted the occupational structure of employment in the USA by comparing the evolution of employment across 175 detailed occupational categories in both countries. We find that, with few exceptions, the occupations that have declined in the USA have also declined in Mexico. Industries with larger growth in imports from Mexico do not experience a decline in their routine employment share in the USA, nor do US industries that increase their use of Mexican intermediate inputs. There is therefore little evidence that US middle-wage jobs are moving south. The evidence is consistent with common shocks being primarily responsible for the decline of middle-wage jobs in both countries.
Subjects: 
employment structure
routine employment
trade
offshoring
Mexico
JEL: 
J21
F66
O33
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-768-2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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