Resource information
This paper develops a novel methodology
to measure the quantity of jobs and value of wages embodied
in exports for a large number of countries and sectors for
intermittent years between 1995 and 2011. The resulting
Labor Content of Exports database allows the examination of
the direct contribution of labor to exports as well as the
indirect contribution via other sectors of the economy for
skilled and unskilled labor. The analysis of the new data
sets documents several new findings. First, the global share
of labor value added in exports has been declining globally
since 1995, but it has increased in low-income countries.
Second, in line with the standard Hecksher-Ohlin trade
model, the composition of labor directly contained in
exports is skewed toward skilled labor in high-income
countries relative to developing countries. However, that is
not the case for the indirect labor content of exports.
Third, manufacturing exports are a key source of labor
demand in other sectors, especially in middle- and
low-income countries. And the majority of the indirect
demand for labor spurred by exports is in services sectors,
whose workers are the largest beneficiaries of exporting
activities globally. Fourth, differences in the labor value
added in exports share across developing countries appears
to be driven more by differences in the composition of
exports rather than in sector labor intensities. Finally,
average wages typically increase rapidly enough with the
process of economic development to more than compensate the
loss in jobs per unit of exports. The paper also includes
the necessary information to build the Labor Content of
Exports database from the original raw data, including stata
do-files and matlab files, as well as descriptions of the
variables in the data set.
