This is the first part of a two-part program MIT News article examining the creation of new jobs in the United States since 1940, based on new research by Ford economics professor David Autor. Part 2 is available here.
In 1900, Orville and Wilbur Wright listed their occupation as “Merchant, Bicycle” on the U.S. Census form. Three years later, they made their famous first airplane flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. So, in the next U.S. census, in 1910, the brothers each called themselves “Inventor of the Airplane.” However, there were not very many of them at the time and it was not until 1950 that the term “aircraft designer” became a recognized category in the census.
As distinctive as their case is, the story of the Wright brothers tells us something important about employment in the United States today. In the United States, most work is new, as U.S. census forms reveal. In other words, the majority of jobs are in occupations that have only emerged since 1940, according to a major new study of U.S. employment led by MIT economist David Autor.
“We estimate that about six out of ten jobs that people have now did not exist in 1940,” says Autor, co-author of a recently published paper detailing the findings. “A lot of things we do today, no one was doing then. Most contemporary jobs require expertise that did not exist at the time and was not relevant at that time.
This discovery, covering the period 1940 to 2018, has broader implications. On the one hand, many new jobs are being created thanks to technology. But not all: some come from consumer demand, such as health service jobs serving an aging population.
On another front, research shows a notable divide in recent new job creation: During the first 40 years of the period 1940-2018, many new jobs were middle-class manufacturing and clerical jobs, but Over the past 40 years, new job creation often involves either highly paid professional work or lower-paid service work.
Finally, the study provides new data on a tricky question: to what extent does technology create new jobs and to what extent does it replace jobs?
The paper, “New frontiers: origins and content of new works, 1940-2018”, appears in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Co-authors are Autor, Ford Professor of Economics at MIT; Caroline Chin, doctoral student in economics at MIT; Anna Salomons, professor at the Faculty of Economics at Utrecht University; and Bryan Seegmiller SM '20, PhD '22, assistant professor at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.
“This is the most difficult and in-depth project I have ever undertaken in my research career,” adds Autor. “I think we’ve made progress on things we didn’t know we could make progress on.”
“Technician, nail”
To conduct the study, researchers delved into government jobs and patent data, using natural language processing techniques that identified related descriptions in patent and census data to link innovations and subsequent job creation. The U.S. Census Bureau tracks new job descriptions provided by respondents, like those the Wright Brothers wrote. Each decade's job index lists approximately 35,000 occupations and 15,000 specialized variations thereof.
Many new professions are the direct result of new technologies creating new forms of work. For example, “Computer applications engineers” was first codified in 1970, “Circuit layout designers” in 1990, and “Solar photovoltaic electrician” debuted in 2018.
“Many forms of expertise are truly technology or service specific,” Autor explains. “It’s quantitatively a big problem.”
He adds: “When we rebuild the electricity grid, we are going to create new professions – not just electricians, but the solar equivalent, which is solar electricians. Eventually it becomes a specialty. The first objective of our study is to measure (this type of process); the second is to show what he reacts to and how it happens; and the third is to show what effect automation has on employment.
However, on the second point, innovations are not the only way to create new jobs. Consumer desires and needs also generate new vocations. As the newspaper notes, “tattoo artists” became a U.S. Census employment category in 1950, “hypnotherapists” was coded in 1980, and “conference planners” in 1990. Additionally, the coding date of US Census Bureau is not the first time someone has worked in this sector. these roles; It was only when enough people held these jobs that the office recognized this work as an important employment category. For example, “Nail Technician” became a category in 2000.
“It’s not just technology that’s creating new work, it’s also new demand,” Autor says. An aging population of baby boomers could create new roles for personal care aides that are only beginning to emerge as plausible employment categories.
In total, among “professionals”, primarily skilled white-collar workers, about 74% of the region's jobs have been created since 1940. In the category of “health services” – the personal services aspect of health care, including general caregivers. , occupational therapy aides, and more – about 85 percent of the jobs emerged in the same time frame. In contrast, in the manufacturing sector, this figure is only 46 percent.
Differences by degree
The fact that some employment fields have relatively more new jobs than others is one of the major features of the U.S. employment landscape over the past 80 years. And one of the most striking things about this period, in terms of jobs, is that it's made up of two fairly distinct 40-year periods.
During the first 40 years, from about 1940 to 1980, the United States became a unique postwar manufacturing power, production jobs increased, and clerical and other middle-income clerical jobs expanded. are developed around these industries.
But over the past four decades, manufacturing began to decline in the United States and automation began to eliminate office work. From 1980 to the present, there have been two main streams of job creation: high-end, specialized professional jobs, and lower-paid service sector jobs of all types. As the authors write in the article, the United States has experienced a “global polarization of occupational structure.”
This corresponds to education levels. The study finds that employees with at least some college experience are about 25 percent more likely to pursue new careers than those with less than a high school diploma.
“The real concern is who the new work was created for,” says Autor. “In the first period, from 1940 to 1980, there was a lot of work created for people without a university degree, a lot of office and production work, middle-skilled work. In the latest period, the sector is divided, with new jobs for university graduates increasingly in professions, and new jobs for non-university graduates increasingly in services.
Still, Autor adds: “It could change a lot of things. We are in a period of potentially significant technological transition.
At the moment, it is unclear how and to what extent developments in technologies such as artificial intelligence will affect the workplace. However, this is also a major question addressed in the present research study: to what extent do new technologies increase employment, by creating new and viable jobs, and to what extent do new technologies replace existing jobs, thanks to automation? In their paper, Autor and colleagues produced new findings on this topic, which are described in the second part of this paper. MIT News series.
Research support was provided, in part, by the Carnegie Corporation; Google; Gak Institute; the MIT Futures Works Task Force; Schmidt Futures Markets; the Smith Richardson Foundation; and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.