Structural Transformation of Occupation Employment

Abstract

We provide evidence on structural transformation from censuses covering three quarters of the world population. As countries develop, the standard patterns of labor reallocation hold for broad categories of both industries ("sectors") and occupations while the employment shares of the service occupations rise in all sectors. We propose a model of structural transformation with sectors and occupations that is consistent with these patterns. The key ingredient of our model is uneven, occupation-specific technological progress. We show that our model is useful for predicting changes in the occupation composition and for understanding why sectoral labor productivity growth has slowed.

Keywords: Occupations, Structural Transformation, Technological Change

JEL Classification: O11, O14