Structural Changes in the Demand for Labor

This paper investigates why labor demand has shifted away from low-skilled toward high-skilled labor in The Netherlands. We focus on the role of changes in relative wages and technological progress. A flexible functional form, proposed by Diewert and Wales, the Symmetric Generalized McFadden cost function, is estimated for the exposed and sheltered sectors. The estimates are based on time-series data for the period 1972–1993, which recently became available. Labor-saving technological change explains most of the displacement of low-skilled workers. The computed elasticities suggest that substitution between labor as a whole and capital is small. However, substitution plays a modest role in the shift from low-skilled toward high-skilled labor, especially in the sheltered sector. Skill-capital complementarity seems relevant in both sectors.