September 2024

IZA DP No. 17319: Establishment Size and the Task Content of Jobs: Evidence from 46 Countries

Using a mix of household- and employer-based survey data from 46 countries, we provide novel evidence that workers in larger establishments perform more non-routine analytical tasks, even within narrowly defined occupations. Moreover, workers in larger establishments rely more on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to perform these tasks. We also document a 15% raw wage premium that workers in larger establishments enjoy relative to their counterparts in smaller establishments. A mediation analysis shows that our novel empirical facts on the task content of jobs are able to explain between 5–20% of the establishment size wage premium, a similar fraction to what can be explained by selection of workers on education, gender, and age.