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The New Division of Labor
Book

The New Division of Labor

How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market

Frank Levy and Richard J. Mumane
Princeton UP, 2004

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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Eloquent

Recommendation

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. getAbstract believes that any reader who appreciates lucid analysis and clear prose will enjoy this book, and will gain understanding and perspective.

Take-Aways

  • In the 1960s, many feared that computers would cause widespread unemployment.
  • A few astute analysts said computers would create new, high paying jobs, but would reduce the demand for certain jobs, pressuring those workers to retrain or lose ground.
  • Computers can replace humans in jobs with content that can be reduced to rules.

About the Authors

Frank Levy is the Daniel Rose Professor of Urban Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books include The New Dollars and Dreams: American Incomes and Economic Change. Richard J. Murnane is the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at Harvard University and author of Who Will Teach? Policies that Matter. Levy and Murnane co-authored Teaching the New Basic Skills.

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