Displacement by Technological Progress in the USSR (Social and Educational Problems and their Treatment)

Anna-Jutta Pietsch, Heinrich Vogel and Gertrude Schroeder

Chapter 7 in Employment Policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1987, pp 149-170 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The labour force of industrialized nations is subject to a constant process of restructuring. This is true for Western industrialized societies as well as for the Soviet Union. The origins of this process are to be found in two interrelated developments: (1) Technological progress leads to an increase in labour productivity. This means that the same quantity of goods is produced with fewer workers because the output capacity of capital equipment is increased, or certain jobs are no longer needed due to mechanization and automation. (2) The increasing national product brought about mostly by rising labour productivity is, as a rule, not used in the same way as the national product generated in the past. As individual and collective prosperity of the nation increases, the structure of demand for goods and services changes likewise. Under ideal circumstances, the jobs lost as a result of the two processes described above are compensated by the creation of new jobs in the same or other production units. In most cases, however, this process does not run smoothly. In Western industrialized nations, demand cannot expand fast enough to keep up with the increase in labour productivity.

Keywords: Labour Force; Technical Change; Technological Progress; Young Worker; Labour Shortage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-08756-3_7

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