Research on Future Skill Demands A Workshop Summary (2008) / Chapter Skim
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6 Skill Supply and Demand
6 Skill Supply and Demand
Pages 63-74
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From page 63... ...
REFLECTIONS ON SKILL DEMAND If current trends continue, Kalleberg said, job growth will be concentrated in high-wage professional, technical, and managerial jobs and in low-wage service jobs, raising questions about future prospects for upward career mobility. He called for further study of possible growth in mid-level jobs, noting that Genentech Corporation is an example of increased employment of mid-level technicians (Murray and Hsi, 2007a)
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From page 64... ...
, Kalleberg argued that, without agreement on an overall measure of skill, it might not make sense to ask whether the skill demands of work are increasing or decreasing; he suggested asking instead about how different dimensions of skill may be changing. Kalleberg observed that one of the most important themes of the previous day is that society constructs workplace skill demands, through choices about how to package tasks together into jobs and occupations.
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From page 65... ...
Cappelli argued against using input-output models to approach skill questions as if they were engineering problems, saying that such an approach might suggest that "inexorable" developments in technology would require "a particular level of skill." He said that the earlier workshop discussions had shown that social and economic choices had a strong influence on skill requirements. As further evidence of the influence of social and economic choices, he said that researchers had found that numerically controlled machine tools affected skill demands quite differently in different settings, depending on management choices, the power of unions, wage levels, and other factors (Shaiken, 1986; Adler and Borys, 1989)
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From page 66... ...
. Cappelli said that the trend of outside hiring, rather than internal development and promotion, is most apparent in Silicon Valley, where technology firms rely almost entirely on colleges and universities to provide the specific skills they need (National Research Council, 2001)
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From page 67... ...
He argued that employers' current concerns reflect their demand for employees with the right attitudes, discipline, and "the skills to step immediately into the job and start doing the work." Describing this demand as a "huge and quantum paradigm change," Cappelli asked whether policy makers should assume responsibility for meeting it. Harry Holzer: Possible Imbalance in Skill Supply and Demand Holzer said that, although he took concerns about the future skill supply more seriously than Cappelli, he agreed that attempts to accurately project demand for skills and supply of skills in order to compare them and map areas of shortage are "wrong, a completely noneconomic way of thinking." Holzer said that two trends -- the retirement of baby boomers and immigration patterns -- could cause problems in the future national skill supply (Holzer and Nightingale, 2007)
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From page 68... ...
He suggested three types of policies to address different aspects of insecurity. First, to help people adjust to possible future changes in jobs and skill demands, he mentioned policies to help young people and working adults develop the broad competencies discussed earlier.
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From page 69... ...
Noting that most of the illegal immigrants lack a high school education, whereas most temporary visas and some permanent visas are given to highly educated workers, Lowell agreed with Holzer that the educational attainment of the immigrant labor force is a "barbell distribution, a little heavier on the bottom than the top." Lowell said that many highly educated immigrants are employed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers, in contrast to the popular perception of immigrants as unskilled.
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From page 70... ...
Focusing on the skill composition of the future immigrant labor force, Passel projected that the proportion with less than a high school diploma would remain stable, while the share with a college degree would grow
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From page 71... ...
Third, he said that econometric models of immigration have found that wage gaps are a major driving force. He noted that wage gaps between the most developed nations (such as the United States)
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From page 72... ...
Responding to another question, Holzer said that, if demand for skills keeps rising as it has in the recent past, the skill supply might not keep pace, for two reasons he had already mentioned -- the immigrants making up a growing share of the labor force would have fewer college degrees than the retiring baby boomers they replaced and rising college costs would make it harder for lower to middle-income people born in the United States to obtain college degrees. Holzer asserted that the continued rise in the wage gap between high school and college-educated workers provides evidence of growing skill demands, but Cappelli argued that this growing wage gap results from the "collapse" of wages for high school-educated workers in the early 1990s.
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From page 73... ...
Bringing in more immigrant engineers would simply reduce wage levels further, Cappelli said. He suggested that, if the labor market adjusted to the current situation by increasing wage levels, that adjustment might be good for workers.
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From page 74... ...
74 RESEARCH ON FUTURE SKILL DEMANDS munication, and other broad skills. Finally, Kalleberg said, the discussion of skill supply and demand highlighted the potential value of policies aimed at encouraging employers to choose the "high road" by increasing workers' skills, productivity, and wage levels.
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