New & Noteworthy: Jobless Recoveries and the Disappearance of Routine Jobs

09 April 2015 3:46PM

Routine occupations once dominated the American labor market and formed the backbone upon which the middle class was built. But technological advances have transformed the modern workplace, and that in turn has changed the way the U.S. economy recovers from recessions.

In a paper released this week, Professor Nir Jaimovich and collaborator Henry Siu from the University of British Columbia argue that structural change within the labor market is the reason why the U.S. economy underwent a jobless recovery during the most recent recession. 

Since 2001, job growth in the United States has come entirely from nonroutine work. According to Jaimovich and Siu, the “rapid and dramatic technological advances of the past 40 years have left an indelible mark on the modern workplace and the way that work is done.” With the advent of robotics, automation, computing, and information processing, routine occupations that were once commonplace have disappeared or become obsolete.  

“This has meant that the elimination of middle-wage jobs during recessions has not been accompanied by the return of such jobs afterward,” concluded Jaimovich and Siu. “Thus, the disappearance of job opportunities in routine occupations is leading to jobless recoveries.”

The paper was commissioned and published by Third Way, a Democratic public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. 

Read the full report on jobless recoveries. 

Press coverage can be found on The Wall Street Journal and the Houston Chronicle.

Learn more about research at Duke Economics.