Drawing on a unique survey dataset, this study examines the existence and nature of linkages between GVC participation and the routine task intensity (RTI) of workers across 47 countries at all developmental stages. Specifically, this paper systematically assesses how the nature of GVCs mediates this relationship, accounting for differences across sectors and types of occupations, particularly offshorable and non-offshorable occupations. Moreover, we evaluate how GVCs contribute to the task structures in the domestic labor markets, and to within-country wage inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient. We distinguish between the direct – through wages – and indirect – through RTI – contribution of GVC participation to wage inequality.

The relationship between GVC participation and RTI is depends on a country’s factor endowments which determine its type of task specialization in GVCs. In developing countries such as Indonesia, a higher backward GVC participation, i.e., the share of imported inputs used in export production, may be associated with a higher worker-level RTI. Such countries tend to have abundant low-wage labor and specialize in the production tasks of basic manufacturing GVCs, typically the final assembly stage. Thus, they rely strongly on imported inputs which they process for their semi-final or final exports. However, high backward GVC integration also characterizes countries specializing in more advanced manufacturing and services GVCs. Such countries are endowed with skilled labor and perform some routine tasks (e.g. customer service or accounting) and some non-routine tasks (e.g., IT support) (World Bank, 2020). Examples include Central Eastern European countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland).<sup>1</sup> The type of GVC participation in East Asian and Central Eastern European countries contrasts sharply with that of many Sub-Saharan African or Latin American countries specializing in commodities – agriculture and mining (Hanson, 2017). These countries show low backward GVC participation as they predominantly export upstream GVC tasks with low reliance on imported inputs and fewer opportunities to innovate and upgrade (FernandezStark et al., 2011; Taglioni & Winkler, 2016; World Bank, 2020). They typically exhibit high forward GVC participation, namely a high share of domestic value added embodied in their direct partner countries’ exports (Borin & Mancini, 2015, 2019). As a result, higher forward GVC participation in commodity-exporting countries may be associated with a higher RTI, as upstream tasks in agricultural or small-scale mining GVCs are more likely to be routine-intensive.<sup>2</sup> High forward GVC participation is also a feature of countries specialized in innovative GVC tasks (World Bank, 2020), but its expected relationship with RTI contrasts that of commodity exporters. In innovative countries, high value-added upstream tasks, such as research and design services, make up a larger portion of their domestic value added that is re-exported by their bilateral trading partners. These tasks tend to be non-routine. These country examples illustrate that the relationship between GVC participation and RTI may vary across sectors and countries with different development levels and models. It may also differ between backward and forward GVC participation.

We make three key contributions. First, this study quantifies the relationship between GVC participation and worker task demand, which remains under-researched (Marcolin et al., 2016). Our PIAAC, STEP, and CULS survey data cover 47 countries at different development levels and types of integration into GVCs. We measure RTI at a worker level, applying the method proposed by Lewandowski et al. (2022). In the absence of direct

> 1 For instance, some East Asian countries that initially specialized in blue-collar jobs managed to increase their workforce's skill supply, upgraded in GVCs, and shifted towards more upstream and downstream activities (de Vries et al., 2019). Similarly, some Central Eastern European countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia) have been upgrading from an assembly-line specialization towards more advanced activities (Kordalska & Olczyk, 2022; Timmer et al., 2019). 2 In agribusiness, for instance, routine tasks include seed sowing and harvesting. More downstream tasks, such as washing, chopping, packing, and applying bar codes on fruits and vegetables, are also routine. Assigning one specialized task to each worker, rather than having one worker perform a series of consecutive tasks, increases the RTI.

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