the new economy, a question

[Henry C.K. Liu]

The organization of a high tech economy is the bipolar shift toward the highly
skilled and the minimally skilled at the expense of the middle.  This explains
the disappearance of the socio-economic differentiation between blue and white
collar workers.
The displacement of older white collar workers is also further exacerbated by
the economy's push for a delay of the retirement age in the private sector and
a subsequent career after early retirement from the public sector.  It is the
nature of a high tech economy that retraining of skill generally means a down
grading of skills, because high tech skills are more efficiently embeddable in
more receptive youthful minds.
The are two immediate impacts of these trends.  The first is the financial
impact of a shift in income pattern toward a shrinking high income group and a
growing low income group.  The second is the social impact of declining job
satisfaction and personal esteem.

Henry

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Anderson, Bob wrote:
>
> >How is it that unemployment can be at a 29 yr low while so many jobs are
> >being eliminated by the technological changes and movement overseas? Is it
> >more than just low wage secondary type jobs are being created?  Is it that
> >a big part of the jobs created are actually in the high-tech fields here,
> >much as the invention of the airplane created a large new industry ?
>
> Long-term studies of U.S. labor markets show tremendous turbulence over the
> decades. Though the figures show large and persistent net job creation over
> the decades, that net is the result of a lot of gross job creation and
> destruction, through expansions and recessions. Contrary to anecdote and
> press reports, that turbulence hasn't really increased significantly over
> time; what seems to be new, and what is probably the cause of all the
> attention, is that the turbulence has now reached formerly insulated
> demographic sectors, notably older white men.   I don't want to minimize
> their dislocation, but, to put it into a soundbite, white-collar workers
> are now experiencing the kind of job instability that's long been familiar
> to blue- and pink-collar workers.
>
> High-tech isn't responsible for all that much job creation. It's also
> unlikely that average hourly wages could be rising, as they have over the
> last 2 years, if all the jobs created were of the "low wage secondary
> type." I think what's happening is that lots of those jobs are being
> created, as are high-end jobs in smaller numbers, with a decided absence of
> middle-quality jobs. But it's going to be a few years before we really know
> for sure.
>
> Doug