A look at the new job-task information in the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth

Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979 and 1997, this article examines how the skill level and task content of U.S. jobs vary among workers born during the 1957–1964 and 1980–1984 periods. This article presents data on how job attributes vary by sex, race, Hispanic origin, and educational attainment as well as by performance on the Armed Forces Qualifying Test and type of occupation. It also examines the relationship between job attributes and wages. A large volume of economic literature is concerned with workers’ accumulation of human capital through schooling, working experience, and on the job training. More recently, economists have begun to enrich the analysis of wages by introducing various job attributes. Most notably, they have looked at whether an individual’s job is routine. Researchers have found that routine jobs pay less than jobs in which workers have more independence in their decisions and actions.