[Page C9.] High-Skill Work Also Goes Offshore Contract documents between Microsoft and companies in India show that highly skilled technology workers are not immune to offshore outsourcing.
Technological advance will tend to raise that threshold while educational attainment will tend to lower it (so that a larger share of the labour force, when displaced, is reallocated into relatively high-skill work rather than into competition for low-skill jobs).But: the real wage varies with labour supply at various skill levels.
I recreated the chart above from Lawrence Katz and Robert Margo using Census data going back to 1850 to show how as routine work fell from 80% of the workforce (mostly farm labor), and how high-skill work gradually expanded from less than 10% to over a third of Today's economy.
High-skill work is the new reality around the world.
(One strain of work, for example, argues that technology has increased labor demand for both high skill and low skill work, while leaving out the middle).
Looking historically, the economy has consistently found space in higher skill, creative work as it eliminated routine work.
At the high skill end of the workforce we increasingly work to targets, not time.
The four works in the program expose Mr. Martins's high skill and a bit more.
According to Keynes, despite entire populations moving into higher skill, higher paid work, "we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy".
Specifically, we expected better comprehension with higher Internet skills, working memory, and previous knowledge.
Waitressing, bartending, and other service industry jobs may be the up and coming trend in high-paying, low-skill work.
