7.1. IT and unemployment This is one of the consequences of information technology that has been lively debated. When IT was introduced, many people feared that there would not be jobs for the same amount of people. Since at that time the
economic growth came to a halt, it was difficult to say whether or not the fear was justified. But now there is an undeniable fact that new technology has not created as many jobs as it has destroyed. According to Kerstin with computerization unemployment will not increase but the type of work done will change. Computerization will increase the gap between those who can and those who do not, which will lead to people quickly becoming out of date when the technique develops fast. The argument for introducing IT in the workplace is that it will increase demand by creating new products, or by reducing costs while improving quality. The following trends are generally agreed about the consequences of IT There will be a shift of employment from the primary economic sector to the secondary sector to the tertiary. Reduction in core manual
and production occupations, increase in peripheral ancillary, administrative and professional jobs. There will beacon- tinued reduction in lifetime working hours. The information sector will dominate employment. It is really hard to quantify the impact IT will have on employment but most case studies analyze employment changes in existing sectors of the economy they often predict a reduction in employment or jobless growth that is reduced costs and increased productivity without increased employment. It has been argued that job losses in one part of the economy resulting in IT maybe compensated by retraining and demand for new jobs such as engineers and programmers would increase thus creating employment. It is also argued that the job losses maybe offset in the long run by retraining and redeployment. The problems with retraining are Not all people can be retrained. Successful retraining needs a lot of funding. There is also a problem in redeployment, which is even after retraining it would be difficult for them to be incorporated in the workplace. Wassily
Leontief supports
this argument he states that “ The general theoretical proposition that the worker who loses his job in one industry will necessarily be able to find employment, possibly after appropriate retraining, in some other industry is as invalid as would be the assertion that horses that lost their job in the transportation and agriculture can have been put to another economically productive use. In summary although the quality of work will improve due to the introduction
of IT in the workplace, it would lead to unemployment, but not the work will disappear but it is the type of work that will change and even with retraining it would be difficult to redeploy the trainees to the economy.
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