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> These are social consequences of the growing gap between highly skilled and low-skilled workers. The former are more and more important to the economy even as
by Avshalom 11y ago
> These are social consequences of the growing gap between highly skilled and low-skilled workers. The former are more and more important to the economy even as the latter become less so with technological progress and globalization
The thing is though, janitors aren't any less important or in demand than they were a 50 years ago, or retail workers, burger flippers, waiters. Less of the low skill work has been offshored than the high skill frankly because it's all service industry, it requires locality.
- toyg 11y agoBut their careers have been cut short by their employers becoming international conglomerates that simply don't promote from the ranks. You start on the shop floor, you die on the shop floor; and wage compression does the rest. The exceptions are very rare (mcdonalds and a few others).
- cwilkes 11y agoI'm not so sure of that ... what's the upward mobility of a small 20 person factory that's probably owned by a family that has the top three jobs in the company? Vs a large company with 3000 employees?
- shostack 11y ago> "The thing is though, janitors aren't any less important or in demand than they were a 50 years ago, or retail workers, burger flippers, waiters." I think you might be underestimating the shift towards automation that is occurring in many services industries, and will only accelerate as robotics and other technologies improve [1]. As soon as companies can automate a robot (or outsource remote control of a non-autonomous one to a cheaper country), they will unless they position themselves on the quality of their human-based customer care, which is an increasingly rare thing. [1] http://www.salon.com/2015/05/10/robots_are_coming_for_your_job_amazon_mcdonalds_and_the_next_wave_of_dangerous_capitalist_disruption/ http://www.salon.com/2015/05/10/robots_are_coming_for_your_j...