Summary of The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity
The article by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, titled The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity, focuses on the issue of how technology has led to the need for skilled labor in most labor markets in the world. The authors of the article acknowledge that over the years, technological advancements have only increased and have rendered some of the human activities that required human labor to be useless. The authors of the article give an example of how the use of water generated electricity led to the fall of the steam-driven engine and how many unskilled laborers lost their jobs in the process. The integration of technology in most of the economic sectors in the country will lead to an increase in the need for skilled labor to complement technology. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
The two authors believe that skilled labor has become an essential aspect of the adoption of a new technology to take over. They argue that the adoption of technology also depends and the capital to support the technology. Goldin and Katz argue that “relative demand for skilled workers will depend on the degree to which the demand for skilled labor in machine-maintenance” (699). If the technology in question is difficult to use, the authors argue that the degree of skilled labor is also going to change. Thus, education level also factors in need of skilled labor because people with a lower level of education are less likely to be hired to run complicated machines. Therefore, the article argues that technology has changed the demand and need for skilled labor in various sectors of the economy.
Work Cited
Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. “The origins of technology-skill complementarity.” The Quarterly journal of economics 113.3 (1998): 693-732.