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:
“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)
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Apart from the fact that women posess the equipment for lactation, mothers seem no more predisposed to, or innately skilled at, child care than are fathers, siblings or non parents. Besides, women obviously come in a variety of shapes, sizes, talents and temperaments. Why shouldn’t they vary in degrees of motherhood?”
—Shari Thurer (20th century)
“The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,—a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,—to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)