[extropy-chat] 'Unskilled jobs to go in 10 years'

[Damien Broderick]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/08/njobs08.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/08/ixnewstop.html


By Malcolm Moore, Economics Correspondent
(Filed: 08/11/2004)

There will be no jobs for unskilled workers in Britain within 10 years, the 
leading employers' organisation claims today.

The prediction is based on the growth in "outsourcing" manufacturing and 
sales jobs abroad to economies where staff are hired at a fraction of the cost.

Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI, will tell his annual 
conference in Birmingham: "There will not be any work in Britain for 
unskilled people . . . within one scholastic generation."

In a survey of 150 companies, which employ 750,000 people between them, 51 
per cent said the pressure to move their jobs abroad had increased.
[etc]


"Protectionist voices who think they can stop this - that's cloud cuckoo 
land," he will tell the conference, which will be attended by Gordon Brown, 
the Chancellor, and Peter Mandelson, the European Trade Commissioner.

"Ensuring people have the skills remains our problem. You have nothing to 
fear if you skill yourself."
[etc etc]

==================

The trouble with this `skilling yourself' theory, as far as I can tell, is 
the insidious and inevitable slide of remaining and new jobs toward the 
righthand side of the capability bell curve. Outsourcing doesn't just mean 
equally stupid people will work for less; it means extremely capable people 
will work for less. For a while, anyway.

Damien Broderick