Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills
Economic inequality is one of the biggest challenges facing society today. Inequality has been recently exacerbated by growth in high- and low-wage occupations at the expense of middle-wage occupations, leading to a “hollowing” of the middle class. Yet, our understanding of how workplace skills driv...
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| Format: | Article |
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American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2018
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118882 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9479-7721 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9487-9359 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9488-0712 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-5982 |
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| author | Rahwan, Iyad Alabdulkareem, Ahmad Frank, Morgan Ryan Sun, Lijun AlShebli, Bedoor Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Rahwan, Iyad Alabdulkareem, Ahmad Frank, Morgan Ryan Sun, Lijun AlShebli, Bedoor Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. |
| author_sort | Rahwan, Iyad |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Economic inequality is one of the biggest challenges facing society today. Inequality has been recently exacerbated by growth in high- and low-wage occupations at the expense of middle-wage occupations, leading to a “hollowing” of the middle class. Yet, our understanding of how workplace skills drive this process is limited. Specifically, how do skill requirements distinguish high- and low-wage occupations, and does this distinction constrain the mobility of individuals and urban labor markets? Using unsupervised clustering techniques from network science, we show that skills exhibit a striking polarization into two clusters that highlight the specific social-cognitive skills and sensory-physical skills of high- and low-wage occupations, respectively. The connections between skills explain various dynamics: how workers transition between occupations, how cities acquire comparative advantage in new skills, and how individual occupations change their skill requirements. We also show that the polarized skill topology constrains the career mobility of individual workers, with low-skill workers “stuck” relying on the low-wage skill set. Together, these results provide a new explanation for the persistence of occupational polarization and inform strategies to mitigate the negative effects of automation and offshoring of employment. In addition to our analysis, we provide an online tool for the public and policy makers to explore the skill network: skillscape.mit.edu. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:25:08Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/118882 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:25:08Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1188822022-09-30T20:59:27Z Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills Rahwan, Iyad Alabdulkareem, Ahmad Frank, Morgan Ryan Sun, Lijun AlShebli, Bedoor Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory MIT Technology and Development Program Alabdulkareem, Ahmad Frank, Morgan Ryan Sun, Lijun AlShebli, Bedoor Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. Rahwan, Iyad Economic inequality is one of the biggest challenges facing society today. Inequality has been recently exacerbated by growth in high- and low-wage occupations at the expense of middle-wage occupations, leading to a “hollowing” of the middle class. Yet, our understanding of how workplace skills drive this process is limited. Specifically, how do skill requirements distinguish high- and low-wage occupations, and does this distinction constrain the mobility of individuals and urban labor markets? Using unsupervised clustering techniques from network science, we show that skills exhibit a striking polarization into two clusters that highlight the specific social-cognitive skills and sensory-physical skills of high- and low-wage occupations, respectively. The connections between skills explain various dynamics: how workers transition between occupations, how cities acquire comparative advantage in new skills, and how individual occupations change their skill requirements. We also show that the polarized skill topology constrains the career mobility of individual workers, with low-skill workers “stuck” relying on the low-wage skill set. Together, these results provide a new explanation for the persistence of occupational polarization and inform strategies to mitigate the negative effects of automation and offshoring of employment. In addition to our analysis, we provide an online tool for the public and policy makers to explore the skill network: skillscape.mit.edu. King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology. Center for Complex Engineering Systems Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ethics and Governance of AI Fund 2018-11-05T17:20:00Z 2018-11-05T17:20:00Z 2018-07 2018-06 2018-10-11T15:57:31Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2375-2548 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118882 Alabdulkareem, Ahmad, Morgan R. Frank, Lijun Sun, Bedoor AlShebli, César Hidalgo, and Iyad Rahwan. “Unpacking the Polarization of Workplace Skills.” Science Advances 4, no. 7 (July 2018): eaao6030. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9479-7721 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9487-9359 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9488-0712 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-5982 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao6030 Science Advances Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ application/pdf American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Advances |
| spellingShingle | Rahwan, Iyad Alabdulkareem, Ahmad Frank, Morgan Ryan Sun, Lijun AlShebli, Bedoor Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills |
| title | Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills |
| title_full | Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills |
| title_fullStr | Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills |
| title_full_unstemmed | Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills |
| title_short | Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills |
| title_sort | unpacking the polarization of workplace skills |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118882 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9479-7721 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9487-9359 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9488-0712 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-5982 |
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