Bradley Setzler , an associate professor of economics in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts, will lead a seminar on U.S. labor market responses to increased import competition from China.
His free talk - "Places versus People: The Ins and Outs of Labor Market Adjustment to Globalization" - is scheduled for noon on Wednesday, Feb. 11, in 167 Hosler Building at Penn State University Park. The event is part of a spring seminar series hosted by the Initiative for Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy (EEEPI).
Setzler co-authored a chapter on globalization in the Handbook of Labor Economics. Using data from 2000 to 2019, the authors found employment levels more than fully rebound in trade-exposed places since 2010, while employment-to-population ratios remain depressed and manufacturing employment further atrophies.
"The adjustment of places to trade shocks is generational: affected areas recover primarily by adding workers to non-manufacturing who were below working age when the shock occurred," the authors wrote in an abstract. "Entrants are disproportionately native-born Hispanics, foreign-born immigrants, women and the college-educated, who find employment in relatively low-wage service industries in health care, education, retail and hospitality."
Trade shocks reduce geographic mobility, with employment recovery stemming largely from young adults and foreign-born immigrants taking their first U.S. jobs in affected areas, the authors found.
"Although worker inflows into non-manufacturing more than fully offset manufacturing employment losses in trade-exposed locations after 2010, incumbent workers neither fully recover earnings losses nor predominantly exit the labor market, but rather age in place as communities undergo rapid demographic and industrial transitions," they wrote in the abstract.
Setzler, the Strumpf Early Career Professor of Economics at Penn State, is a research associate in labor studies with the National Bureau of Economic Research. His areas of interest include labor market power; mergers, collusion and conduct in labor markets; and local labor market adjustments to trade and automation exposure and job creation from foreign investment.
A research fellow with the Rockwool Foundation Berlin Institute for the Economy and the Future of Work, Setzler holds doctoral and master's degrees in economics from the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree in mathematics and philosophy from the University of South Carolina.
About EEEPI
Established in 2011, EEEPI operates as a University-wide initiative at Penn State with support from the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and the Institute of Energy and the Environment. EEEPI seeks to catalyze research in energy and environmental systems economics across the University and to build a world-class group of economists with interests in interdisciplinary collaboration.
