Relative Supply of Skilled Labor
Education is an important factor in increasing skill level. The increase in number of people attending high schools and colleges contribute to the increase in the supply of skilled labor. Mass education, however, is not the only factor. Immigration is also a big contributor. Immigrants created a bimodal skill distribution, where most immigrants were either low skill or high skill workers. There were few who were in between.
Historical Reference - In the United States such factors have caused an overall increase in the supply of skilled labor during the 20th century. The shift from unskilled to skilled labor can be attributed to increases in human capital, or in other words increasing the efficiency of humans through investment in knowledge. The American boom in public education, specifically high schools, congruently increased the level of human capital and total factor productivity.
Read more about this topic: Skill (labor)
Famous quotes containing the words relative, supply, skilled and/or labor:
“Man may have his opinion as to the relative importance of feeding his body and nourishing his soul, but he is allowed by Nature to have no opinion whatever as to the need for feeding the body before the soul can think of anything but the body’s hunger.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Has God’s supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“Most works of art are effectively treated as commodities and most artists, even when they justly claim quite other intentions, are effectively treated as a category of independent craftsmen or skilled workers producing a certain kind of marginal commodity.”
—Raymond Williams (1921–1988)
“For Afro-Americans, it could be argued that every year they’ve spent in this country since they arrived in chains to perform forced labor has been 1984.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)