Risks of involuntary job losses among male workers are examined with data spanning 1968 to 1992 from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that the incidence of involuntary job losses among prime-age men with strong links to the labor market rose substantially over the period under...

This paper examines shifts over time in the relative demand for skilled labor in the United States. Although de-skilling in the conventional sense did occur overall in nineteenth century manufacturing, a more nuanced picture is that occupations "hollowed out": the share of "middle-skill" jobs -...

We develop a model in which a worker's skills determine the worker's current wage and sector. Both the market and the worker are initially uncertain about some of the worker's skills. Endogenous wage changes and sector mobility occur as labor-market participants learn about these unobserved...