Task Requirements, Time Requirements, and the Gender Gap in Jobs and Pay; Chinhui Juhn (University of Houston)

Abstract

Non-routine cognitively demanding jobs require both the capacity to cope with complexities as well as long and unusual hours. Women’s comparative disadvantage in providing hours might offset their comparative advantage in performing cognitively demanding jobs. Using DOT and O*NET data and measures of time requirements at the occupational level we find that non-routine cognitive task requirements are highly correlated with time requirements. Using Census and American Community Survey data from 1960 to 2018 we find that women are less likely to sort into non-routine cognitive tasks, and more likely to sort into routine tasks. In National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data we find that women with high cognitive skills are especially under-represented in non-routine cognitive tasks while they are over-represented in routine tasks. These mismatch effects play an important role in accounting for the slowdown in the convergence of occupational sorting and wages.