Staff Reports
Labor Market Pooling and Occupational Agglomeration
September 2009 Number 392
Revised January 2010
JEL classification: R12, J24, R20

Authors: Todd M. Gabe and Jaison R. Abel

This paper examines the micro-foundations of occupational agglomeration in U.S. metropolitan areas, with an emphasis on labor market pooling. Controlling for a wide range of occupational attributes, including proxies for the use of specialized machinery and for the importance of knowledge spillovers, we find that jobs characterized by a unique knowledge base exhibit higher levels of geographic concentration than do occupations with generic knowledge requirements. Further, by analyzing co-agglomeration patterns, we find that occupations with similar knowledge requirements tend to co-agglomerate. Both results provide new evidence on the importance of labor market pooling as a determinant of occupational agglomeration.

Available only in PDF pdf 37 pages / 120 kb
For a published version of this report, see Todd M. Gabe and Jaison R. Abel, "Specialized Knowledge and the Geographic Concentration of Occupations," Journal of Economic Geography 12, no. 2 (March 2012): 435-53.
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