# Lower-skilled occupations face greater upskilling pressure in U.S. job ads

## TL;DR

The study finds that lower-skilled U.S. jobs are experiencing the most pressure to gain new skills, especially in small firms and markets.

## Contribution

The novel finding is that lower-skilled occupations face greater skill evolution pressure than higher-skilled ones.

## Key findings

- Lower-skilled occupations show greater skill change than STEM occupations when considering skill distance.
- Small employers and markets experience larger skill upgrades to match larger counterparts.
- Skill evolution may reduce job quality gaps between different worker groups.

## Abstract

Substantial scholarship has estimated the susceptibility of jobs to automation, but little has examined how job contents evolve in the information age as new technologies substitute for tasks, shifting required skills rather than eliminating entire jobs. Here we explore patterns of occupational skill change and characterize occupations and workers subject to the greatest re-skilling requirements in the United States. Recent work found that changing skill requirements are greatest for STEM occupations in the 2010s. Nevertheless, analyzing 167 million online job posts covering 721 occupations, we find that when accounting for distance between skills, skill change is greater for lower-skilled occupations: those with fewer skills, lower wages, and less educational requirements. We further investigate the differences in skill change across employer and market size, as well as social demographic groups. We find that jobs from small employers and markets experienced larger skill upgrades to catch up with the skill demands of their large employers and markets. While these varied skill changes could create uneven reskilling pressures across workers, they may also lead to a narrowing of gaps in job quality and prospects. We conclude by showcasing our model’s potential to chart job evolution directions using skill embedding spaces.

Many studies assess which jobs risk automation, but less is known about how skill demands shift within surviving jobs. Here the authors show that U.S. lower-skilled occupations face the steepest upskilling requirements, especially in small firms and labor markets.