Degrees and Dollars -Krugman NY Times article

And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate.

Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill.

And then there’s globalization.

In this case, then, technological progress is actually reducing the demand for highly educated workers.

Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.”

Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.”

Computers, it turns out, can quickly analyze millions of documents, cheaply performing a task that used to require armies of lawyers and paralegals.

Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.

Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.”

And legal research isn’t an isolated example.

And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.