Labour Market Polarization in Advanced Countries

This paper explores the effects of offshoring, technology and Chinese import competition on labor market polarization in European countries. We find that polarization occurs mostly as a result of polarization within individual industries, while the reallocation of employment away from less polarized industries towards more highly polarized industries also contributed to a lesser extent. In manufacturing, within-industry polarization is mostly associated with technological change, but we also find some tentative evidence that Chinese import competition contributed as well. In other private industries outside of manufacturing, technological change and offshoring are the most relevant forces affecting within-industry polarization. The process of between-industry polarization is driven by widespread deindustrialization in developed countries. We find that Chinese import competition contributed to the decline of employment in the less polarized manufacturing industries. Differences in labor market institutions only explain a limited amount of cross-country variation in the association of polarization and the three forces we consider.