Multidimensional heterogeneity and matching in a frictional labor market — An application to polarization

Abstract

This paper examines the role that changes in production technology, namely computerization, have played on labor market inequality in the US from the late 1980s to the 2010s. It also demonstrates that such technological change is consistent with the timing of labor market polarization in the US, including the end of the decline in $50/10$ wage percentile ratio and the slowdown of employment growth in high-wage jobs from the 2000s. The paper does so using a model with two key ingredients: 1) directed search and 2) two-sided multidimensional heterogeneity. Calibration results show that the complementarity between a workers’ cognitive skills and the cognitive task intensity of jobs increased while that between manual skill and tasks did not. The full model can fully account for the rise and fall of the $90/50$ and $50/10$ wage percentile ratios respectively. It also generates 72.6 percent of the rise in employment share of high-paying jobs relative to middling jobs and 69 percent of the fall in employment share of middling jobs relative to low-paying jobs. The paper suggests that the end of the decline in the $50/10$ wage ratio may be due to rank-switching between workers across the wage distribution from the 2000s, while the slowdown of employment growth in high-wage jobs may result from the trade-off between the returns to applying for high-wage jobs and the likelihood of being hired.