Globalization, Trade, and the Task Content of U.S. Employment

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

The structure of the global economy currently is being transformed in ways that will have profound implications for the location of production, the nature of work, and economic well-being around the world. Early stages of globalization were characterized by the international exchange of final products, whether port for wheat or automobiles for apparel, resulting in a spatial division of labor that was sorted by industry. In contrast, the current round of globalization is separating production tasks once integrated within firms and industries, shifting them to locations around the world. To understand the implications of this shift for the U.S. economy, greater understanding is needed about tasks that can be "offshored" and which are likely to remain place-bound. The objective of this research project is to measure how trade has impacted the task structure of the U.S. economy. While theoretical models of task trade have recently been developed, empirical exploration has been severely limited by lack of appropriate data. The investigators will create a unique dataset suited to measuring the impact of task trade by linking detailed U.S. Census microdata that describe trade flows, firms, workers and the tasks in which they are engaged. These data will enable the researchers to explore three primary questions: (1) What is the impact of trade on the task structure of the U.S. economy? (2) How is trade-induced job loss related to the analytic and interpersonal complexity of occupations? (3) How has the subnational geography of tasks shifted in the U.S. economy over the last fifteen years, and how are these shifts related to the regional impacts of trade and the characteristics of local production systems? In today's highly interconnected world, patterns of trade are closely linked to economic performance and the geography of work. This project will improve scientific knowledge regarding the transformation of the global system of trade from one premised on exchanges of final goods to one focused on the exchange of a rapidly increasing array of intermediate goods and services. The project will measure the impact of the changing nature of trade on the structure of work in the U.S. economy and the differential effect of that change across U.S. regions. The results of this project will help to identify the nature of jobs that are robust to trade competition and those footloose activities that are likely to be increasingly located offshore. The project also will contribute to ongoing debates in fields like education and labor economics regarding the preparation required for 21st century workers in advanced economies.