What is the contribution of changes in female labor supply to the decline of employment in routine jobs observed in the U.S. between 1970 and 2000? While typically attributed to changes in labor demand, the decline of routine employment has been larger for women than for men, as women moved out of routine clerical roles and into high-skill professions. This paper assesses the contribution of the Quiet Revolution—a concurrent shift in women’s life-cycle labor supply from intermittent to continuous—to the reallocation of aggregate employment from routine to abstract jobs over this period. The Quiet Revolution plausibly contributed to women’s movement out of routine and into abstract occupations because the latter feature stronger human capital dynamics, offering returns to continuous work. I develop and calibrate an equilibrium model of the labor market that incorporates both the Quiet Revolution and changes in production technology. Counterfactual analyses reveal that while the Quiet Revolution accounts for 12% to 22% of the drop in the aggregate routine employment share, technology is the dominant force in explaining changes in the overall distribution of employment. Nonetheless, the Quiet Revolution is essential for gender-specific trends: without it, women would neither have entered the labor force nor transitioned into abstract occupations to the extent observed.
Suggested citation:
Uniat, Lindsey. 2026. “The Quiet Revolution and the Decline of Routine Jobs.” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2026-01. https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2026-01