The new labor skills in the new economy

Abstract

In the last 30 years a dramatic change has been observed in the supply and price of skilled labor relative to unskilled labor. The aim of this chapter is to review the recent empirical literature on the changing demand for labor skills, to define the scope and direction of change in labor skills and to explore the reasons of the observed change, especially on the labor skills demanded in knowledge based global economy. Findings on the reasons of skill change are important for the study aims of this book because they lead to results and consequently to implications to be used in the distribution of earnings and employment of the workforce. The empirical research identifies the main reasons of the observed change in skills as the interactions of technological change, organizational change and globalization.