The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market

The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market
Average customer rating:

Best book on workforce in a long time.

A most insightful analysis of the historical labor data.

Academic, dry, and mildly digressive

Effortless Learning

A Good Read!

The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market
Frank Levy , and Richard J. Murnane
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Labor Policy | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Office Automation | Skills | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Technology & Society | Communication | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0691124027

Book Description

As the current recession ends, many workers will not be returning to the jobs they once held--those jobs are gone. In The New Division of Labor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane show how computers are changing the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease the transition to the new job market.

The book tells stories of people at work--a high-end financial advisor, a customer service representative, a pair of successful chefs, a cardiologist, an automotive mechanic, the author Victor Hugo, floor traders in a London financial exchange. The authors merge these stories with insights from cognitive science, computer science, and economics to show how computers are enhancing productivity in many jobs even as they eliminate other jobs--both directly and by sending work offshore. At greatest risk are jobs that can be expressed in programmable rules--blue collar, clerical, and similar work that requires moderate skills and used to pay middle-class wages. The loss of these jobs leaves a growing division between those who can and cannot earn a good living in the computerized economy. Left unchecked, the division threatens the nation's democratic institutions.

The nation's challenge is to recognize this division and to prepare the population for the high-wage/high-skilled jobs that are rapidly growing in number--jobs involving extensive problem solving and interpersonal communication. Using detailed examples--a second grade classroom, an IBM managerial training program, Cisco Networking Academies--the authors describe how these skills can be taught and how our adjustment to the computerized workplace can begin in earnest.

Customer Reviews:

Best book on workforce in a long time........2007-05-14

If you only read one book this year, read this book. It will change the way you think about work, education and the global economy. Murnane and Levy ask two fundamental questions: What do computers do better than people? (A: rules-based thinking) What do people do better than computers? (A: pattern recognition)

Much of the work of the industrial economy was rules-based, both on the assembly line and in the manager's office. Most of the work in the innovation economy is based on pattern recognition, including what Murnane and Levy call expert thinking and complex communication. Their research shows that these are the skills for which demand is growing in the economy at all rungs of the job ladder.

I've found their argument so compelling that I have purchased copies of the book for most of the top policy-makers in my home state of Rhode Island. The ideas in the book are starting to shape the discussion of school reform and workforce development here. In particular, we are concerned that our school system, like those in every other state, is still producing labor for a rules-based industrial economy that no longer exists. While it's possible to absorb rules-based thinking from a book or a lecture, it's difficult to teach pattern recognition skills in a pure classroom setting. You learn to recognize patterns by actually doing it the company of someone who is already very good at it. It's the essence of good experiential learning and mentoring, which can no longer be thought of as a luxury in the education system. If we want to produce the workforce we need for an innovation economy, we'll need to make experiential learning a part of every K-12 and college experience.

A most insightful analysis of the historical labor data. .......2004-11-28

This is a very short and easy to read book. Yet, it is very informative and insightful. I have read many books covering the same theme written by Peter Drucker, John Naisbitt, Robert Reich, and Lester Thurow among other visionaries and economists. This one is the best on the subject for two reasons. The two authors studied the historical data much more extensively than the others. Also, this book is more focused. The authors did not get sidetracked by many related economic and political issues.

The authors extensive research dispels thoroughly the notion that computerization is bad for employment. To the contrary, computerization has increased both the quantity and quality of jobs.

The authors studied in detail labor trends over the past 40 years to support their conclusion. They uncovered the prescient work of Herbert Simon, who wrote an essay in the 1960s on the change in labor mix with the advent of technologies. The authors documented that for the most part Simon was correct. Due to computerization, the labor mix was going to change materially over the next several decades tilted towards a greater concentration of jobs associated with greater complexity in terms of critical thinking and judgment.

Just as Simon predicted, there is today a far greater percentage of the population involved in complex jobs associated with an intense critical thinking component. Such jobs include managers, professionals, technicians, and many sales related activities. By the same token, there is a far smaller percentage of the population engaged in blue collar routine work.

As mentioned, just as the quality of jobs (greater complexity) has improved immensely during the past several decades, so as the quantity. Between 1969 and 2000, the labor force grew by a staggering 63% from 83 million to 135 million. And, this surge in labor occurred during the most intense computerization era.

If we just observe the change in our own working lives, we can confirm that our job functions have changed dramatically for the better. We all use computers with increasingly powerful hardware that can handle increasingly complex software. In turn, the software replaces many of the routine components of our jobs. It also gives us quick access to a math level which would have been accessible only to PhDs not long ago. I don't think any of us would readily turn the clock back on computerization regarding our specific jobs. The authors will convince you the same is true at the macroeconomic level.

Academic, dry, and mildly digressive.......2004-10-05

I saw the authors of this book interviewed on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer and immediately ordered it. I found a book that made its central points within 2-3 chapters, but it continued to illustrate those points ad nauseum in subsequent chapters. The examples in the book of methods and challenges of teaching expert thinking and complex communications are too detailed, in that the depth reached in the examples does a disservice to the key points of the book. Ironically, this book could be even shorter than its 157 pages.

The central points of this book are very basic, and anyone who works with technology for a living will find it almost too basic to bother with. One valuable part of the book deals with the trends of income and job availability as related to increases in the use of computing; it's nice to see that subject addressed succinctly. If I were teaching a class on IT or evolution in technology, I would assign select readings from this book to illustrate the connections between what people do better than computers and vice-versa, income, skill acquisition, and historical trends.

Effortless Learning.......2004-09-07

A wonderful quick read, a painless injection of knowledge, letting those of us who never got beyond Econ 1-a understand the revolutionary impact of computers on American society. Not all a bed of roses -- we face the troublesome specter of our own version of Benjamin Disraelli's Victorian "two nations,"
with a growing gap between those at the bottom and the rest of society.

A Good Read!.......2004-07-28

This excellent short book has implications far beyond its titular subject. Although ostensibly about the effect of computers on labor, it provides a model for thinking in economically rational terms about any kind of innovation that offers lower costs or greater efficiency. In a nutshell, scaremongers tend to exaggerate the threats and underestimate the benefits of such innovations. Some prognosticators, for example, predicted massive unemployment, poverty and social unrest due to employment disruptions stemming from computers. Why? Because computers could do many jobs, especially automated ones, faster and better. Something like the classical economic notion of comparative advantage is at work: computers and people should each do what they are good at. On the other hand, the authors analyze how innovation leaves many low-level, unskilled workers behind, and explain how and why the haves must make reasonable, just provisions for the have-nots. We believe that any reader who appreciates lucid analysis and clear prose will enjoy this book, and will gain understanding and perspective.

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Dry Lands: Man and Plants
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Dry Lands: Man and Plants

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The Lynne Truss Treasury: Columns and Three Comic Novels
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The Cat's Meow

Funny!

The Lynn Truss Treasury

Mixed bag, but not all that funny

The Lynne Truss Treasury: Columns and Three Comic Novels

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ProductGroup: Book
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Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt The Door

Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit & Wisdom From History's Greatest Wordsmiths

Eats,Shites and Leaves

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Book Description

Lynne Truss debuted in America as a guffaw-inducing grammarian, but her British audience has known her for years as a critically acclaimed novelist and columnist. Her previous works are now available stateside in one volume, complete with a new preface.

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, a raucous comedy of errors, follows the exploits of Osborne Lonsdale, who writes a weekly column called "Me and My Shed" for a floundering gardening magazine. When the publication is taken over by a gung-ho management team, Lonsdale must learn to cope with his new coworkers.

In Tennyson's Gift and Going Loco, Truss turns a fiendishly clever eye to the literary world. Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that re-imagines the world of the nineteenth-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes dodgy Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelgänger in gothic fiction, amidst the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life.

Making the Cat Laugh is a riotous collection of columns about single life. Truss comments on dating, secondhand smoking, shopping, holidays, and people who ask, "How's the novel going?" All the while, she continues an eighteen-year quest to make her cat laugh. Reportedly, the feline remains unimpressed.

A feast of wit, The Lynne Truss Treasury will delight fans of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Praise for Lynne Truss and her work:

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed
“Lynne Truss has written a perfect comic novel at the first attempt… a witty, ingenious romp.”
-Daily Telegraph

“This book will become a perennial comic delight… this Truss must never be stopped.”
-Sue Limb

“Sex, violence, murder and psychoanalysis lurk in the garden shed - a breezy, rude, pleasurable alternative to cutting the grass.”
—Obeserver

Making the Cat Laugh
“A small masterpiece of comedy...with abundant close observation, the familiar is made fresh...A continual hoot.”
-The Times

“A truly inventive comic writer ... You should not attempt to read Making the Cat Laugh while travelling on public transport”
-The Irish Times

“[Lynne Truss is] a social humorist of sharp insight and startling candour.”
-Scotland on Sunday

Tennyson's Gift
“A comic novel of subtle distinction ... richly entertaining and at times very moving.”
-The Times

“The perfect summer book. No deck-chair will be complete without it.”
-The Independent

“Terrific...Tennyson's Gift is witty, surprising, oddly compassionate and hugely assured.”
-The Sunday Times

Going Loco
“Truss lets her imagination explode in what can only be described as a riddle devised while coming down of hallucinogens.”
-Time Out

“A classic comic novel, unashamed, exuberant, fiendishly clever, and a joy to read.”
-The Daily Telegraph

“Going Loco is wonderfully underplayed, unpredictable and unexpectedly sinister.”
-Sunday Express

Customer Reviews:

The Cat's Meow.......2006-02-27

I ordered this not knowing what to expect, and was delighted. The stories are mildly weird, well-written and certainly intriguing.

Funny!.......2006-02-26

Lynne Truss is a very intelligent, hysterically funny writer. Expect loads of amusing sarcasm and many many laughs reading the columns and short novels in this book.

The Lynn Truss Treasury.......2006-01-31

After reading EATS SHOOTS and LEAVES, I was anxious to read these three comic novels by Lynn Truss. She goes from being hilariously funny to going on and on like someone detached from reality. With only the first of these "comic novels" to pass judgment upon, I would be sure that this author is schizophrenic; or, at least schizoid. I'm disappointed in Ms. Truss and would not recommend this "Treasury" to anyone. Eats Shoots and Leaves is a classic which any and all "wordsmiths" appreciate.

Mixed bag, but not all that funny.......2006-01-09

As a word nerd, I bought Ms. Truss's book Eats Shoots & Leaves, her satirical take on punctuation, but admit I have not read it yet. I saw her Treasury on the display shelf of the library and checked it out, expecting some very clever writing.

Maybe it's just that I'm not British, but I didn't find her fiction all that funny or even well-written. In the first story, she seems to try too hard. In all of the fiction, she seems almost self-conscious of the literary devices she's using. Her writing seems to scream, "Look at me -- I'm a writer writing about writers who write! And look at all the clever devices I use!"

The columns were a little less over-the-top, but by then I had wearied of her and just wanted to get through the (very hefty) book.

Oh, and finally, I don't think the differences between British and American punctuation are so great that comma splices and such are acceptable in Britain. The book wasn't even that well punctuated!

Maybe I should have given her only two stars, but the poor dear seemed to be trying so hard I didn't have the heart. If you still think you'd like to read this book, check it out of the library.

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