Skilled Labor Supply,IT-Based Technical Change and Job Instability

Luc Behaghel (1, 2) , Julie Moschion (3)

1 PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques
2 PSE - Paris School of Economics
3 University of Melbourne

We investigate the impact of IT diffusion on the stability of employment. We document the evolution of different components of job instability over a panel of 348 cities in France, from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. The evidence goes against the view that the diffusion of IT has spurred job instability. Yet, analysing long-term differences in the occupational structure, we find that IT diffusion has increased the share of high-skill occupations at the expense of low-skill occupations. This is consistent with French firms' reliance on their internal labour market to meet the new skill requirements associated with IT diffusion.

Mots clés: skill bias; labour turnover; job security; Internal labour markets

Domaines: Economies et finances

Luc Behaghel, Julie Moschion. Skilled Labor Supply,IT-Based Technical Change and Job Instability. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2016, 118 (1), pp.79-104. ⟨halshs-01245537⟩