On the Degradation of Skills

Abstract

Although social scientists have long believed that mechanization degrades skills, they disagree on the meaning and measurement of skills. A dominant view stresses that capitalists simplify skills to increase efficiency and profits; another, that managers deskill jobs to increase control over workers and work organization. Although case studies document the disappearance of many crafts during the industrial transformation of Britain and the United States, they do not show that skills as a whole declined. Recent historical studies reveal that industrialization may have created as many new skills as it destroyed, that early manufacturing used many traditional skills, and that new industrial skills were genuine. They also show that scientific management deskilled workers slightly and that management successfully wrested control of work organization from the traditional crafts. Twentieth-century census data reveal little aggregate compositional change in the skill distribution of major occupations. Short-term studies of individual occupational skills show little or no aggregate change. Finally, case studies of automation suggest that its deskilling effects vary greatly by occupation and industry. Firm conclusions about skill degradation must await time-series analysis of national surveys that measure components of occupational skills in different industries.