Declining Occupations and Career Outcomes in the United States | NBER
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Declining Occupations and Career Outcomes in the United States
Erling Barth,
Maria Forthun Hoen,
Sari Pekkala Kerr
& William R. Kerr
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Working Paper 35614
DOI 10.3386/w35614
Issue Date August 2026
We study long-run career consequences of initial employment in an occupation that subsequently declines. Linking the 2000 Decennial Census to US administrative employment and earnings records through 2020, we follow more than 2.4 million workers. Employment in an occupation that contracts by at least 25 percent is associated with about 5 percent lower cumulative earnings despite slightly more quarters worked. The earnings differential closely matches evidence from Sweden and Norway, although employment adjustment differs. Occupational mobility is substantial but incomplete, while children’s later occupational destinations are much less tied to their household heads’ 2000 occupational-growth categories.
Acknowledgements and Disclosures
We thank David Autor, Peter Blair, Xi Song, and seminar participants for helpful comments and Ryan Barr, Clarence Harley, and Louis Maiden for research assistance. This work was supported by Harvard Business School and the Norwegian Research Council (grants #324358 and #335043). The research in this paper was conducted while the authors were Special Sworn Status researchers of the U.S. Census Bureau. Any views expressed are those of the authors and not those of the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau has reviewed this data product to ensure appropriate access, use, and disclosure avoidance protection of the confidential source data used to produce this product. This research was performed at a Federal Statistical Research Data Center under FSRDC Project Number 2766 (CBDRB-FY26-P2766-R12740; R12789; R13080). This research uses data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program, which was partially supported by National Science Foundation Grants SES-9978093, SES-0339191 and ITR-0427889; National Institute on Aging Grant AG018854; and grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Erling Barth, Maria Forthun Hoen, Sari Pekkala Kerr, and William R. Kerr, "Declining Occupations and Career Outcomes in the United States," NBER Working Paper 35614 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35614.
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