The impact on the skill premium of the task content of jobs: Evidence from online job ads for Chile 2009 - 2018

We evaluate the influence on the skill premium of the task content of jobs by exploiting the text data from online job ads covering 2009-2018 (over 189,000 ads) published by one of the leading Chilean online job portals (www.trabajando.com). Our analysis tests the expected complementarity between skilled labour, non-routine cognitive (analytical and interactive), and routine cognitive tasks. Our results show weak evidence of the influence on the skill premium of our task-related measures. Nevertheless, some implications arise from this apparent decrease in the importance of the tasks skilled workers typically perform, such as inefficient educational investment or unwanted changes in the occupational ladder.