WHAT NEW JOBS WILL HIGH-TECH FUTURE BRING?
-- by David Crane
While the news from Statistics Canada on job
creation is encouraging, with 327,000 jobs created
so far this year, it's not time to get carried
away.
It's all too easy, when you come out of a
recession, to believe that life is not "back to
normal."
Companies may fall into this trap, concluding
the need for restructuring is over, not
recognizing that we live in a world of constant
restructuring. Governments may be tempted to
start thinking they no longer have to worry about
unemployment.
But, in fact, powerful forces, whose effects
are only beginning to be felt, will have a
traumatic impact on workers, changing the kinds of
jobs available, the structure of the workplace,
the terms of employment and the levels of income
these jobs will provide.
One of these forces is the emergence of
developing countries, such as Mexico and China, as
alternative sources of products and locations for
investment. The other, which gets less public
discussion, is the impact of new technology.
In many ways, we are only at the beginning of
the third industrial revolution in which the
sweeping effects of information technologies will
change not only our jobs, industries, education
systems and institutions, but also our way of
life.
Some commentators are pessimistic on what the
new technologies will mean. Writing in Society,
Thomas Ide, former chairman of Canada's
Communications Research Advisory Board, and Arthur
Cordell, a federal information age specialist and
former member of the Science Council of Canada,
warn of increasing employment insecurity.
Information technologies, such as those used in
the financial services sector, are eliminating
many middle-class jobs, they contend. But the
transportation, communications and utilities
industries are others where information
technologies will have a powerful impact.
Telecommunications has undergone the most
radical changes, though. "Digitalization, lasers,
and the development of fibre optics paved the way
for the marriage of telephones and computers and a
host of new services," they say.
But the automation of the service sector, while
"providing a dizzying array of new means to
satisfy our wants and needs," is also affecting
the job market in a profound and disturbing way,
Ide and Cordell argue.
"Simply stated, we are beginning to see the
creation of a work force wit a bi-modal set of
skills. Highly trained people design and
implement the technology, and unskilled workers
carry out the remaining jobs. The resulting
divide in the work force is reflected in
disturbing patterns of income. The middle class
is shrinking, with only a few joining the upper
class and many taking the step down."
It is easy to see this as a replay of old fears
about automation.
But there's much more to it than that.
Christopher Freeman and Luc Soete, two of Europe's
smartest analysts of technology and the economy,
also raise some critical questions about future
employment in industrial countries such as Canada.
In a study funded by IBM Europe, Information
Technology and Employment, they note that
unemployment today is affecting groups formerly
immune, such as middle management and white collar
workers.
In the past, the two economists say, they have
accepted the economic argument that while many
jobs will be lost to technological change, "this
could be more than compensated by a process of job
creation in new occupations, industries and
services."
However, they also recognized that "the
compensation mechanism was not automatic or
instantaneous" and the "new jobs might often be
created in different regions."
While they tend to believe that new technology
generates new demand and output growth, Freeman
and Soete are cautious in projecting this view
into the future.
For example, the necessary growth in
productivity in high technology industries to stay
competitive may force a decline in employment in
these industries. Likewise, competitive forces in
other business services could also force job cuts.
This means employment growth may occur mainly
in sectors with low productivity, such as personal
services. These include education, health care
and leisure services and entertainment.
All of this is speculative.
But as we plan a new social security system, as
well as a science and technology policy, we will
certainly need a better sense of where our future
job s will come from. In the meantime, the best
prediction we can make the future will be
turbulent. Restructuring may become our way of
life.
-- Toronto Star, October 9, 1994
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