 We Can Work It Out: The Impact of Technological Change on the Demand for Low‐Skill WorkersScottish Journal of Political Economy, 2004, vol. 51, issue 5, 581-608 Abstract: There is little doubt that technology has had the most profound effect on altering the tasks that we humans do in our jobs. Economists have long speculated on how technical change affects both the absolute demand for labour as a whole and the relative demands for different types of labour. In recent years, the idea of skill‐biased technical change has become the consensus view about the current impact of technology on labour demand, namely that technical change leads to an increase in the demand for skilled relative to unskilled labour painting a bleak future for the employment prospects of less‐skilled workers. But, drawing on a recent paper by Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) about the impact of technology on the demand for different types of skills, this paper argues that the demand in the least‐skilled jobs may be growing. But, it is argued that employment of the less‐skilled is increasingly dependent on physical proximity to the more‐skilled and may also be vulnerable in the long‐run to further technological developments. Date: 2004 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:51:y:2004:i:5:p:581-608 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Scottish Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by Tim Barmby, Andrew Hughes-Hallett and Campbell Leith More articles in Scottish Journal of Political Economy from Scottish Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC. |
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