The cyclical component of labor market polarization and jobless recoveries in the US

摘要

Based on quarterly occupation-level data from the US Current Population Survey for 1976- 2013, we exploit common cyclical employment dynamics to identify two clusters of occupations that roughly correspond to the widely discussed notion of "routine" and "non routine" jobs. After decomposing the cyclical dynamics into a cluster-specific ("structural") and an occupation-specific ("idiosyncratic") component, we detect significant structural breaks in the systematic dynamics of both clusters around 1990. We show that, absent these breaks, employment in the three "jobless recoveries" since 1990 would have recovered significantly more strongly than observed in the data, even after controlling for observed idiosyncratic shocks. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.