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We compute worker flows between employment in abstract, routine and manual tasks as well as unemployment and non-participation using French and US survey data between 2003 and 2016. Entries and exits from routine employment generate 57% of unemployment variance in France and 46% in the US. Job losses have been concentrated on routine occupations, the collapse in the routine job finding rate is still the main driver of the unemployment ramp-up in the Great Recession. We then explore how job polarization affects labor market dualism. In France, losses in routine jobs consist more particularly in massive losses of routine standard jobs, while in the recovery, workers find on average more frequently non standard (NWS) rather than standard jobs in routine occupations. The pattern is quite different in the US: while many routine jobs have been lost during the crisis, in the recovery, the job seekers who found a routine job are more likely to find a standard job. Our variance decomposition exercises echoes this result: job finding of routine NSW account for approximately 21% of French unemployment variance. In contrast, in the US, the contribution of routine standard work alone explains 20\ of changes in US unemployment.
