Employment skills for the robot age

摘要

Increasing productivity in manufacturing industry leads to a continuing shift in the balance between employment in ‘productive’ and in ‘service’ industries, the latter providing more employment at present in a ratio of about 70:30. This paper is primarily concerned with employment in manufacturing industry. Some have seen automation as a means of de-skilling jobs, but there is evidence of a gradual ‘upward’ shift of skill requirements in manufacturing industry: the unskilled workers are being eliminated and the skilled manual workers replaced by technicians with mental skills. This introduces the need for re-training and raises the question whether one can have a society in which there are no unskilled persons.