Leading labor economist David Autor authors report presented by the Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group and the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future
Contact: Jon Purves
Senior Media Relations Manager
The Aspen Institute
Jon.Purves@aspeninstitute.org
Washington, DC, July 8, 2020––Today the Economic Strategy Group, a program of the Aspen Institute, released a new report by David Autor, the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, in collaboration with the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, which Autor co-chairs.
Autor presents evidence that employment and earnings opportunities for non-college workers (defined in his report as workers without a bachelor’s degree) in urban labor markets have substantially deteriorated over the past three decades. The fact that urban labor markets no longer reward non-college workers with an “urban wage premium” is an important and previously underappreciated trend. Additionally, these trends are likely to be exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis due to a sustained loss of demand in hospitality and business services sectors. Specifically, it highlights:
The brief highlights several key points:
- The reversal of opportunity for non-college urban workers is the result of long-term changes in urban labor markets. Rising automation and international trade have eliminated many middle-skill occupations that were traditionally held by non-college educated workers, such as administrative support, clerical work, and urban manufacturing.
- Non-college workers in US cities now perform substantially less specialized and less skill-intensive work than in earlier decades.
- The occupational polarization that has reduced the prevalence of middle wage jobs among urban workers has been most pronounced among Hispanics; this polarization is less pronounced, but still substantial among Blacks; and substantially more moderate among whites.
- Autor anticipates that the current COVID-19 crisis is likely to exacerbate the decline in employment and earnings opportunities for non-college urban workers by reducing demand in the urban hospitality sector (i.e., air travel, ground transportation, hotels, restaurants) and in urban business services (i.e., cleaning, security, maintenance, repair, and construction).
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