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Author: Macaluso, Claudia
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Macaluso, Claudia
Skill Remoteness and the Economics of Local Labor Markets
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 2017
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT)
Keyword(s): Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Geocoded Data; Layoffs; Local Labor Market; Occupational Information Network (O*NET); Skills; Unemployment; Unemployment Rate

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This work quantifies the effects of discrepancies between local supply and demand for skills on wages, employment, and mobility rates of laid-off workers. I propose the concept of local skill remoteness to capture the degree of dissimilarity between the skill profiles of workers and jobs in a local labor market. I implement a measure of local skill remoteness at the occupation-city level, and find that higher skill remoteness at layoff is associated with lower re-employment rates and lower wages upon re-employment. Earnings differences between the top and bottom skill remoteness quartiles amount to a loss of 15% of the median worker's annual income and persist for at least two years. Skill-remote workers also have a higher probability of changing occupation, a lower probability of being re-employed at jobs with similar skill profiles, a higher propensity to migrate to another city and, conditional on migration, a higher likelihood of becoming less skill-remote. Motivated by this evidence, I develop a search-and-matching model with two-sided heterogeneity that provides a natural framework to interpret my skill remoteness measure. I use a calibrated version of the model to show that subsidies to on-the-job training lower the average skill remoteness of unemployed workers, thus the aggregate unemployment rate. The marginal benefit of such a policy is increasing in the level of unemployment.
Bibliography Citation
Macaluso, Claudia. Skill Remoteness and the Economics of Local Labor Markets. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 2017.