Technology-driven new jobs in the United States have predominantly been filled by young, college-educated workers in urban areas, according to a study led by MIT labor economist David Autor. In the postwar United States, new forms of work benefited college graduates under 30 more than any other group.

The paper, "What Makes New Work Different from More Work?", is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Economics. Its authors are Autor, Caroline Chin, a doctoral student in MIT's Department of Economics; Anna M. Salomons, a professor at Tilburg University's Department of Economics and Utrecht University's School of Economics; and Bryan Seegmiller, an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

"We had never before seen exactly who is doing new work. It's done more by young and educated people, in urban settings," Autor said.

The study extends a 2024 paper by the same four co-authors, which found that about six out of ten jobs in the United States from 1940 to 2018 were in new specialties that had broadly developed since 1940. The researchers drew on U.S. Census Bureau data from 1940 to 1950 and American Community Survey data from 2011 to 2023. Because Census Bureau records become public after about 70 years, the team could examine individual-level data from the 1940 and 1950 censuses and track the same workers as they changed jobs. Through a collaborative research arrangement with the U.S. Census Bureau, the authors also gained secure access to person-level American Community Survey records, enabling analysis of earnings, education, and other demographics.

In 1950, about 7 percent of employees were in types of work that had emerged since 1930. From 2011 to 2023, about 18 percent of workers were in lines of work introduced since 1970. People employed in new work in 1940 were 2.5 times as likely as the general population to be in new work in 1950, and college graduates were 2.9 percentage points more likely than high school graduates to be engaged in new work. New work has, on aggregate, higher salaries than existing forms of work, and the wage premium fades over time as expertise becomes more widespread. "The scarcity value erodes. It becomes common knowledge," he said. "If everyone is an expert, then no one is an expert."

Government-backed expansion of research and manufacturing in the 1940s, in response to World War II, accounted for a large amount of new work and new forms of expertise. "This says that wherever we make new investments, we end up getting new specializations. If you create a large-scale activity, there's always going to be an opportunity for new specialized knowledge that's relevant for it. We thought that was exciting to see," he said.