Disaggregating U.S. Labor Statistics for the GTAP Computable General Equilibrium Model

This paper presents a new database that disaggregates U.S. labor data within the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model into 22 different occupations. Building on and refining the methodology of Carrico et al.(2012), we construct detailed occupation-by-sector tables for the U.S. economy using survey data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). We document the data sources, processing steps, and methodological enhancements used to generate 2019 wage and employment tables for integration into the GTAP model framework. The standard GTAP model includes only five broad labor categories. The five-category aggregation can obscure important occupational differences in labor market outcomes. The tables we developed can be used to split the data on payments to labor services in the GTAP model, thereby enabling a more granular representation of labor categories. By disaggregating U.S. labor data within the GTAP model into 22 distinct occupations, the model becomes more suitable for forward-looking counterfactual analyses that examine how economic changes affect workers in different occupations across the U.S. labor market.