Permanently Displaced? Increasingly Disconnected? Labor Force Participation in U.S. States and Metropolitan Areas
IMF Working Papers, May 21, 2018
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- Permanently Displaced? Increasingly Disconnected? Labor Force Participation in U.S. States and Metropolitan Areas
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Benjamin Hilgenstock, Zsoka Koczan
- Published: May 21, 2018
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781484354858.001
Key findings
- The United States stands out among advanced economies with marked declines in labor force participation.
- National averages conceal considerable within-country heterogeneity.
- The paper documents a broad-based decline in labor force participation, especially pronounced outside metropolitan areas.
- Metropolitan areas with higher exposures to routinization and offshoring experienced larger drops in participation in 2000-2016.
- Areas with different occupational mixes can experience divergent labor market trajectories as a result of trade and technology.
Analysis and drivers
- Focus: regional differences at the state and metropolitan area levels to shed light on drivers of participation rates.
- Novel measures: uses novel measures of local vulnerability to trade and technology (exposure to routinization and exposure to offshoring) to explain variation in participation declines across metropolitan areas.
- Temporal coverage noted in findings: 2000-2016.
Implications
- The interaction of trade and technology with local occupational mixes can lead to divergent labor market outcomes across regions.
- Declines are not uniform; nonmetropolitan areas exhibit especially pronounced drops in participation.
Subjects and keywords
- Subject: Aging, Employment, Labor, Labor force participation, Labor markets, Population and demographics, Technology
- Keywords: Aging, automation, cohort effect, cyclical condition, dependency ratio, Employment, employment share, exposure to offshoring, exposure to routinization, Global, Labor force participation, labor market, labor market indicator, Labor markets, population aging, technology, US US Bureau of Economic Analysis, WP
Source: IMF Working Paper — Permanently Displaced? Increasingly Disconnected? Labor Force Participation in U.S. States and Metropolitan Areas (May 21, 2018).