Bowles, J. (2014) “The computerisation of European jobs – who will win and who will lose from the impact of new technology onto old areas of employment?“, Bruegel Institute, 17 Ιουλίου.
Who will win and who will lose from the impact of new technology onto old areas of employment? This is a centuries-old question but new literature, which we apply here to the European case, provides some interesting implications.
The key takeaway is this: even though the European policy impetus remains to bolster residually weak employment statistics, there is an important second order concern to consider: technology is likely to dramatically reshape labour markets in the long run and to cause reallocations in the types of skills that the workers of tomorrow will need. To mitigate the risks of this reallocation it is important for our educational system to adapt.
Debates on the macroeconomic implications of new technology divide loosely between the minimalists (who believe little will change) and the maximalists (who believe that everything will).
In the former camp, recent work by Robert Gordon has outlined the hypothesis that we are entering a new era of low economic growth where new technological developments will have less impact than past ones. Against him are the maximalists, like Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, who predict dramatic economic shifts to result from the coming of the ‘Second Machine Age’. They expect a spiralling race between technology and education in the battle for employment which will dramatically reshape the kind of skills required by workers. According to this view, the automation of jobs threatens not just routine tasks with rule-based activities but also, increasingly, jobs defined by pattern recognition and non-routine cognitive tasks.
Σχετικές αναρτήσεις:
- Adonis, A. (2014) “Mending the Fractured Economy, Smarter State – Better Jobs, Final Report of the Adonis Review“, An Independent Review for the Labour Party, supported by Policy Network, Ιούλιος.
- Ball, L. (2014) “The Great Recession’s long-term damage“, VoxEU Organisation, 01 Ιουλίου.
- Filippetti, Andr., Peyrache, Ant. (2013) “Is the Convergence Party Over? Labour Productivity and the Technology Gap in Europe“, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 51, Issue 6, pp. 1006-1022.