As the current recession ends, many workers will not be returning to the
jobs they once held--those jobs are gone. In The New Division of
Labor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane show how computers are changing
the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease
the transition to the new job market.
The book tells stories of people at work--a high-end financial advisor,
a customer service representative, a pair of successful chefs, a
cardiologist, an automotive mechanic, the author Victor Hugo, floor
traders in a London financial exchange. The authors merge these stories
with insights from cognitive science, computer science, and economics to
show how computers are enhancing productivity in many jobs even as they
eliminate other jobs--both directly and by sending work offshore. At
greatest risk are jobs that can be expressed in programmable rules--blue
collar, clerical, and similar work that requires moderate skills and
used to pay middle-class wages. The loss of these jobs leaves a growing
division between those who can and cannot earn a good living in the
computerized economy. Left unchecked, the division threatens the
nation's democratic institutions.
The nation's challenge is to recognize this division and to prepare the
population for the high-wage/high-skilled jobs that are rapidly growing
in number--jobs involving extensive problem solving and interpersonal
communication. Using detailed examples--a second grade classroom, an IBM
managerial training program, Cisco Networking Academies--the authors
describe how these skills can be taught and how our adjustment to the
computerized workplace can begin in earnest.
