Skill (labor) - Relative Supply of Skilled Labor

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Historical Reference - In the United States such factors have caused an overall increase in the supply of skilled labor during the 20th century.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:

    Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)

    Friends and contemporaries should supply only the name and date, and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    ... it must be obvious that in the agitation preceding the enactment of [protective] laws the zeal of the reformers would be second to the zeal of the highly paid night-workers who are anxious to hold their trade against an invasion of skilled women. To this sort of interference with her working life the modern woman can have but one attitude: I am not a child.
    Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)

    Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)