The new information technology - International diffusion and its impact on employment and skills - A review of the literature

The technological revolution is creating new goods and services and altering how and where they are produced. One of the principal issues for all countries is how these new technologies will affect employment and the composition of skills demand. Surveys the literature to attempt to answer three main questions: to what degree are the new technologies becoming diffused around the world? How much do they reduce, or increase employment? And do they reduce, or increase, the skills required in the labour force? Touches briefly on implications for educational policy. The survey suggests that because of new technologies, new organizations of production, changing employment conditions and the development of new sectors of production, the complementarity of general, formal schooling, in-plant training and learning-by-doing to capital investment are increasing over time and that general schooling plus on-the-job training is more complementary to new technologies than is vocational schooling. The former combination is more likely to give workers the flexibility they need in such changing conditions.