(Bloomberg) -- For all the headlines about America's persistent gender wage gap, here's a silver lining for female workers: as they entered the workforce between 1980 and 2000, the most educated ones successfully snagged high-skilled jobs, even as men increasingly struggled to find work matching their education.
A newly-updated paper digs into why that happened, kicking off this week's economic research roundup. We also take a look at what's going on with wages and the business cycle, how population trends are affecting wages, and at the health impacts of trade. Check this column each Tuesday for the latest economic studies from around the world.
Social skills at work
The "End of Men" and Rise of Women in the High-Skilled Labor Market
Published February 2018 (latest version)
Available on the NBER website
Social skills have become more essential in high-wage jobs, and that seems to favor women, based on an updated National Bureau of Economic Research paper by York University's Guido Matias Cortes and his co-authors. There has been a fall in the likelihood that a college-educated man in the U.S. works in an occupation that pays a high wage and requires high cognitive abilities since 1980. In 2000, 63 percent of men were in such jobs, compared to 66 percent in 1980. The opposite was true of educated women, who increasingly matched into high-skill work over that time period.
The authors find a strong link between an occupation's female share and the importance of social skills in that job, "consistent with findings in the psychology and neuroscience literatures that indicate that women have a comparative advantage in performing tasks that require social skills." They estimate in a back-of-the-envelope calculation that increased demand for social abilities accounts for 57 percent of the rise in women in good jobs.
Importantly, it does seem to be demand – not changing supply – driving intensified emphasis on soft skills. An analysis of 9 million job advertisements between 1940 and 2000 finds that an increase in “social words” in posts about a type of job (think: communication, teamwork, collaboration, negotiation) was associated with a subsequent increase in the female share in that occupation.
Wages, holistically
New Evidence on Cyclical Variation in Labor Costs in the U.S.
January 2018
Available on the NBER website
Looking at an unusually comprehensive gauge of earnings, researchers find that inflation-adjusted compensation became more counter-cyclical – meaning it ticked up as the economy went down and then weakened during recovery periods – between 1982 and 2014. That was especially true in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis. The finding is important because it joins a growing body of research (see this, for instance) in contradicting the conventional wisdom that wages are pro-cyclical, and also because the authors include non-wage perks, which are often overlooked – but which now account for a third of workers' total compensation packages.
So what's driving the trend? It's increasingly hard for employers to cut both pay and benefits in dollar terms, especially during a downturn, based on the analysis (more on that in this paper). As inflation plummeted in the wake of the last recession – eroding less of each paycheck – that inability to skimp on wages resulted in a bump up in real pay. Interestingly, the break from the business cycle isn't uniform across industries: labor costs are more counter-cyclical in service sectors than on factory floors, and fishing and forestry actually see compensation move with the economy.
Weekly demo(graphic)
Population Aging and the Macroeconomy
Published Jan. 31, 2018
Available on the Bank of England blog
As advanced economy populations age, they will continue accumulating savings and weighing down interest rates, Bank of England researchers write in a new blog post. Why? Even though net worth dips off slightly in retirement, it isn't by much. And importantly, the cohorts that follow the retirees will continue saving more than their predecessors so long as life expectancy is rising. (Note that this isn't exactly the chart the researchers use, but it illustrates the same point and this way you can see the underlying dataset, which can be found here).
Obesity and trade
Weight gains from trade in foods: Evidence from Mexico
Published Feb. 2, 2018
Available at Vox EU
Mexico imports a large and growing share of its food, and food that is considered unhealthy has surged “spectacularly,” economists Lorenzo Rotunno and Matthias Rieger write in a Vox EU post. That's probably helping to drive a surge in local obesity. The authors find that a 14 percentage point increase in the unhealthy share of imports leads to a 5 percentage point increase in the likelihood of obesity – and that's import to keep in mind when thinking about the gains from trade, they write. “The Mexican experience is informative for countries in the Global South,” they write. “Integrating nutrition and other health concerns into the formulation of food trade policies is paramount.”
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah McGregor at smcgregor5@bloomberg.net, Randy Woods
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
Essential Business Intelligence, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice, Daily Fuel, Gold and Silver Prices and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
