export measures at the task level,<sup>3</sup> we link sectoral measures of GVC participation to RTI at the worker level in a given sector, drawing on the methodology of Borin & Mancini (2019) based on EORA data. We also control for technology use with a country-sector share of workers who use computers at work. The country-sector level globalization and technology measures are plausibly exogenous to the decisions of individual firms and workers. The closest study to ours is Lewandowski et al. (2022), but we use much more disaggregated measures of GVC participation (especially in manufacturing) and assess the relative role of forward and backward linkages. Reijnders and de Vries (2018) also provided evidence on the role of offshoring and technological change in GVCs in explaining the increase in non-routine occupational labor demand in a sample of 37 advanced and emerging countries.<sup>4</sup> However, they assumed that occupations are identical globally and measured occupational task contents with American data (the Occupation Information Network – O*NET). We use worker-level RTI to account for cross-country task differences in comparable occupations. This is vital as theory suggests that offshoring leads to a global polarization of tasks within occupations (Grossman & RossiHansberg, 2008) and occupational task demands indeed differ between countries (Caunedo et al., 2021; de la Rica et al., 2020; Lewandowski et al., 2022; Lo Bello et al., 2019).<sup>5</sup> We find significant linkages between GVC participation and RTI. Importantly, these associations differ between backward and forward integration. Overall, backward GVC participation is not correlated with RTI, while higher forward GVC participation is associated with more routine-intensive work. Moreover, the strength of this relationship is negatively related to countries’ development – it is stronger in countries with relatively low GDP per capita and weaker in countries with high GDP per capita.

Second, this study assesses how the nature of occupations and sectors mediates the relationship between GVC participation and worker-level RTI. Specifically, it investigates the role of occupations’ offshorability (Blinder & Krueger, 2013). The relationship between GVC participation and RTI may be particularly pronounced among workers performing offshorable tasks in low-skilled occupations. Workers in less developed countries have a comparative advantage in performing routine tasks due to their larger endowment with low-skill workers (Grossman & Rossi-Hansberg, 2008). Indeed, Lewandowski et al. (2022) found that the relationship between backward GVC participation and worker-level RTI is the strongest among workers in low-skilled occupations.

We find a strong and significant relationship between GVC participation – both backward and forward – and RTI among workers in offshorable occupations, especially in less-developed countries. However, we find no such relationship among workers in non-offshorable occupations. In addition, acknowledging that sectoral specialization of countries matters for the global division of tasks (Hanson, 2017), this paper examines heterogeneity between sectors. Importantly, we find a contrasting relationship between GVC participation and RTI in the industrial and business services sectors. In industrial sectors, a higher GVC participation is associated with more routine-intensive work in offshorable occupations, confirming that a country’s GVC participation is driven by the manufacturing sector (Fernandes et al., 2022). In sharp contrast, a higher GVC participation in business services sectors is correlated with less routine-intensive work in non-offshorable occupations.

> 3 To understand how GVCs shape the division of tasks across countries, research would ideally relate measures of task exports to data on tasks’ routine intensity. GVC participation measures to date are only available at the sector or firm level for a given country. However, recent work has introduced new measures of income and job activities in exports where activity is defined as a sector-occupation pair (Kruse et al., 2023).

> 4 Reijnders and de Vries (2018) combine input-output data to decompose changes in occupational labor demand along the value chain, but their methodology does not allow differentiation between intensities of GVC participation.

> 5 Other strands of literature relating globalization to the demand for workers in routine jobs study the effects of global trade (Autor et al., 2015), the China trade shock on local labor markets (Aghelmaleki et al., 2022; Autor et al., 2013, 2016), as well as offshoring (Autor et al., 2016; Baumgarten et al., 2013; Ebenstein et al., 2014; Goos et al., 2014; Hanson, 2017).

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