Abstract

Three factors constitute the new global division of labor that causes structural unemployment in advanced industrialized countries: (1) Globalization has increased outsourcing and off-shoring with manufacturing jobs and white collar work moving overseas. (2) Lean production has moved throughout the manufacturing industries of the world, with the service industries following behind. Lean production reduces jobs but can also create some jobs. (3) Advanced technologies reduce old jobs (e.g., newspapers, post office, etc.) but also create new jobs. The internet allows jobs to be done from anywhere in the world, which aids off-shoring, and automation reduces jobs but creates a few jobs in design and maintenance. These three forces destroy and create jobs in a maelstrom of processes, which are connected in complex ways. The challenge of understanding this vortex of labor is to put these diverse markets and social forces together to explain the distribution of investment and employment. It is not only actors (corporations, states, labor, and institutions with rules and regimes), but also the instruments and interactions of contemporary global networks and information technologies that accelerate job flows across the globe. These processes can be synthesized in three distinct national models: the profit, market share, and neo-corporatist models.

Document Type

White Paper

Publication Date

2010

Notes/Citation Information

A submission to the National Science Foundation's SBE 2020: Future Research in the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences. Proposal 217 for Rebuilding the Mosaic: Fostering Research in the Social, Behavioral and Economic sciences at the National Science Foundation in the Next Decade (Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, 2011).

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