Abstract
AbstractThis paper overviews key findings concerning the evolution of job skill requirements in Britain, and their relationship to technology and work organisation, based on surveys dating from 1986. The use of skills has been rising, as indicated by several indicators covering multiple domains. Technological change is robustly implicated in these rises, but it is not possible to satisfactorily classify most tasks according to how easily they are encoded and thereby clearly link the changes to the nuanced theory of skill-biased technical change associated with asymmetric employment polarisation. Moreover, changing work organisation also contributes to explaining the rises, both in skills use and in skills development. Nevertheless, the extent of worker autonomy in the workplace declined notably during the 1990s; this decline is not accounted for by the data, but is thought to be associated with changing management culture. Changing skill requirements also affect pay. In addition to the education level both computing skills and influence skills attract a premium in the labour market. There is an increasing cost in terms of pay from overeducation and a rising prevalence of overeducation. Together, these changes are reflected in an increased dispersion of the graduate pay premium. While these findings have provided important contextual information for the development of skills policies, they have had little effect on engendering policies for stimulating improved job design.
Highlights
The value of job requirements data has become widely appreciated for the light it sheds on the evolution of employment and the distribution of wages
The “Social Change and Economic Initiative” (SCELI) of 1986 included for the first time a set of questions for individuals on the broad skills requirements of their jobs. These same items were included again in the Employment in Britain survey of 1992, and in 1997 the Skills Survey added to the indicators of broad skill requirements a raft of questions on the generic skills used in jobs
Our objective in this paper is to provide an overview of key insights about job skills and work organisation that can be derived from these surveys
Summary
The value of job requirements data has become widely appreciated for the light it sheds on the evolution of employment and the distribution of wages Sources of such data have, been relatively scarce, based on surveys in only a few countries. The result is that, even though these surveys were not originally designed as a series, through careful replication of items a systematic and unusual record of change in British jobs has been assembled Through this development of the job requirements approach, a number of valuable insights have been gained, which have shed light on theories about technological and organisational change, and have helped to mould the way that policy-makers think about the problem of skill in the British context.. We discuss the extent to which our findings have proved useful for the purposes of policy-makers
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