The relationship between occupational growth and literacy proficiency in the United States, 1982--1992

This study investigates the relationship between occupational growth rate and literacy proficiency and the return to literacy in the United States in 1982--1992. The measure of literacy skills is taken from the National Adult Literacy Survey. The full measure consists of 165 items of three types: prose, document, and quantitative. The measure of occupational growth rates are the proportion of civilian employees by occupation in 1982 and 1992 by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor statistics. A two level hierarchical linear model described by Raudenbush and Bryk (1992) was applied to assess the relationship between mean literacy proficiency and occupational growth, and the return to literacy of the workers across 433 occupations between 1982 and 1992 in the U.S.;The findings suggest that there was a highly positive association between the occupational growth and mean literacy of an occupation in overall occupations. However, the relationship between occupational growth and mean literacy is largely explained by differences between occupational sectors rather than differences within occupational sectors. The information economy requires workers with higher literacy skills across all occupations between 1982--1992. However, the strength of this relationship between mean literacy and occupational sectors, namely, data occupations and knowledge production occupations after controlling for educational attainment, diminished.;Despite the fact that average earnings of workers in the information sector are significantly higher than the average earnings of workers in the non-information sector, no evidence was found regarding the return to literacy skills is greater for workers in the information sector than it is in the non-information sector. No evidence was found indicating that the return to literacy is greater in jobs that are growing rapidly in personal service and knowledge occupations. However, the return to literacy skill of workers in the data handling occupations is greater for jobs that are growing rapidly.