The Evolution of Work in the United States

2020/03/26 by Enghin Atalay, Phai Phongthiengtham, Sebastian Sotelo +1 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Labor market dynamics and wage inequality #Firm Innovation and Growth #Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis

paper · doi:10.1257/app.20190070

openalex publication_date 2020/03/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Using the text from job ads, we introduce a new dataset to describe the evolution of work from 1950 to 2000. We show that the transformation of the US labor market away from routine cognitive and manual tasks and toward nonroutine interactive and analytic tasks has been larger than prior research has found, with a substantial fraction of total changes occurring within narrowly defined job titles. We provide narrative and systematic evidence on changes in task content within job titles and on the emergence and disappearance of individual job titles. (JEL E24, J21, J24, J31, N32)

Citations

• Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation
• The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market*
• Text as Data
• Skill Requirements across Firms and Labor Markets: Evidence from Job Postings for Professionals

Cited by

• Occupational tasks and wage inequality in West Germany: A decomposition analysis

Discussions

• A neat paper in the April issue of @AEAjournals: Applied. Atalay, Phongthiengtham, Sotelo, and Tannenbaum look at job postings from 1950 to 2000 and show how much job descriptions have changed within [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]

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