Relative Demand of Skilled Labor
One of the factors that increases the relative demand for skilled labor is attributed to the introduction of computers. In order to operate computers, workers must build up their human capital in order to learn how such a piece of machinery works. Thus, there is an increase in the demand for skilled labor. In addition to the technological change of computers, the introduction of electricity also replaces man power (unskilled labor) which, in turn, also shifts out the demand curve.
Technology, however, is not the only factor. Trade and the effects of globalization also play a role in affecting the relative demand of skilled labor. One case includes a developed country purchasing imports from a developing country, which in turn replaces products made with domestic low-skilled labor. This, in turn, decreased the demand for low-skilled workers. Both of these factors, thus, increase the wages of highly skilled workers.
Read more about this topic: Skill (labor)
Famous quotes containing the words relative, demand, skilled and/or labor:
“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune—what the world will bring, and the man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the man brings, and the world will demand of him. That is his Fate.”
—Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985)
“No skilled hands
caress a stranger’s flesh with lucid oil before
a word is spoken
no feasting
before a tale is told, before
the stranger tells his name.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market.
He has no time to be anything but a machine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)