David R. Howell argues that the collapse of low-skill wages in the United States cannot be explained by a skill mismatch resulting from a technology-driven decline in the demand for low-skill labor. He presents evidence refuting the prevailing belief that a substantial shift in demand away from...

The improvement in the relative economic status of African-American Workers in the 1960's and 1970's was reversed in the 1980's, a decade that also featured a collapse in the relative (and real) wages of the last skilled (Bound and Freeman, 1992; Blau and Kahn, 1992; Levy and Murnane, 1992). At the same...