Emerging and Disappearing Work, Thriving and Declining Firms

Using the text of vacancy postings from 1940 to 2000, we examine the characteristics of firms which hire for newly emerging and soon-to-be disappearing work practices. To do so, we classify job titles as emerging or disappearing according to the years in which they appear. We verify that emerging work involves higher skill levels and is closer to the technological frontier --- qualities inherent to innovation. We find that, among the set of publicly listed firms, those which post ads for emerging work tend to be younger, more R&D intensive, and have higher future sales growth. Among privately held firms, those which post ads for emerging work are more likely to go public in the future. We then explore heterogeneity in the job vintage-firm performance relationship according to jobs that are in product-related technical fields versus in business related non-technical fields. New technological work correlates with R&D intensity and future sales growth, while survival and publicly traded status is more closely related to having newer vintages of business-related non-technological jobs. Our measures of firm innovativeness can be constructed for all employers, and are not limited to publicly traded firms or to industries in which R&D spending and patenting are prevalent.