Chapter 2 (p. 35-45)
The labour market:
- Substantial increase in demand for labour reflects economic growth and population growth over the period. In spite of the recessions it continued to grow.
- Another way of tracking growth in demand for labour, is looking at the total number of jobs. This figure can be high because of jobs held by people over the retirement age and those who have two or more part-time jobs.
- What sort of skills are employers looking for? => long-term trends paint here a clear picture too.
- One of the biggest debates among labour market economists concern the nature of the skills that employers will be looking for in the future.
* A debate that has very important implications for government education policy
- Influenced by Manual Castells of Berkeley University in California, it has become common for policymakers to believe that a ‘new economy’ is rapidly developing which will increasingly be dominated by companies which are ‘knowledge intensive’ in nature.
=> According to this ‘upskilling thesis’ lower-skilled jobs will be rarer and rarer in industrialised countries.
- Because it’s cheaper to have it done in developing countries, people tend to outsource their productions.
- Harry Braverman => his theories derive from a Marxian perspective as well as from observations of the activities of corporations in the 1960’s and 1970’s. This contrasting ‘deskilling thesis’ argues that businesses competing in capitalist economies will always look for ways of cutting their labour costs, and that they do this in part by continually reducing the level of skills required by the people they employ.
=> it follows that, far from leading to a demand for higher-level and knowledge, the advent of an economy based on information and communication technologies will over time reduce such demand.
- The up-skillers draw attention to the fact that the major growth areas in labour demand are in the higher-skilled