The Distribution of Occupational Tasks in the United States: Implications for a Diverse and Aging Population

We document the age-race-gender intersectionality in the distribution of occupational tasks in the United States. We also investigate how the task content of work changed from the early-2000s to the late-2010s for different age-race/ethnicity-gender groups. Using the Occupation Information Network (O*NET) and pooled cross-sectional data from the American Community Survey (ACS) we examine how the tasks that workers perform vary with age and over time. We find that White men transition to occupations high in non-routine cognitive tasks early in their careers, whereas Hispanic and Black men work mostly in physically demanding jobs over their entire working lives. Routine manual tasks increased dramatically for 55-67 year-old workers, except for Asian men and women. Policymakers will soon be challenged by financial stress on entitlement programs, reforms could have disproportionate effects on gender and racial/ethnic groups due to inequality in the distribution of occupational tasks.