International Trade and the Changing Demand for Skilled Workers in High-Tech Manufacturing

This paper examines the effects of changing trade pressures on the demand for skilled workers in high-tech and traditional manufacturing industry groupings and in individual high-tech sectors. For industry groupings, changing import and export prices have mixed effects, with coefficients switching signs between wage share and employment share models. These findings suggest that changes in earnings and employment of skilled workers are not moving in the same direction in response to shifting trade pressures. For individual high-tech sectors, both price and orientation measures had significant effects, but the direction of these effects varied substantially by sector.