Job Tasks and Wages in Developed Countries

Periodical
Labour Economics
Volume
65
Year
2020
Access date
March 23, 2023
Relates to study/studies
PIAAC Cycle 1

Job Tasks and Wages in Developed Countries

Evidence from PIAAC

Abstract

This paper addresses the empirical relationship between job tasks and wages for a harmonised sample of 19 developed countries. We do so by using worker-level PIAAC data to account for task heterogeneity within occupations. Our contribution is threefold: First, we compute abstract, routine and manual task measures that are found to be well-validated visa-vis previous research. Second, we estimate task prices, and find that a one-standard-deviation increase in abstract tasks is related to a 3.3-log-point wage premium, whereas there is a 2.6 to 2.9-log-point wage penalty for each standard deviation of routine (manual) tasks. Development factors and labour market institutions, particularly union coverage and strictness of employment protection legislation, seem to play a role in the differences in all three task prices.