The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market PDF
Preview The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market
This page intentionally left blank How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION New York PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2004 by Russell Sage Foundation Requests for permission to reproduce materials from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY and Russell Sage Foundation, 112 East 64th Street, New York, New York 10021 All Rights Reserved Second printing, and first paperback printing, 2005 Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12402-5 Paperback ISBN-10: 0-691-12402-7 The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows Levy, Frank, 1941– The new division of labor : how computers are creating the next job market / Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane. p. cm. ISBN 0-691-11972-4 (cl. : alk. paper) 1. Labor supply—Effect of technological innovations on. 2. Labor supply—Effect of automation on. 3. Computers—Social aspects. 4. Employees—Effect of automation on. 5. Automation—Economic aspects. I. Murnane, Richard J. II. Title. HD6331.L48 2004 331.1—dc22 2003065497 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Dante Printed on acid-free paper. (cid:1) pup.princeton.edu www.russellsage.org Printed in the United States of America 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii CHAPTER 1 New Divisions of Labor 1 PART I Computers and the Economy CHAPTER 2 Why People Still Matter 13 CHAPTER 3 How Computers Change Work and Pay 31 PART II The Skills Employers Value CHAPTER 4 Expert Thinking 57 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER 5 Complex Communication 76 PART III How Skills Are Taught CHAPTER 6 Enabling Skills 99 CHAPTER 7 Computers and the Teaching of Skills 109 CHAPTER 8 Standards-Based Education Reform in the Computer Age 131 CHAPTER 9 The Next Ten Years 149 Notes 159 Index 169 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS MANY PEOPLE HELPED US DURING THE YEARS THAT WE worked on this book. First and foremost, we thank our friend and col- league David Autor, professor of economics at MIT. David has had a long-standing interest in the impacts of computers on work. In the sum- mer of 1998 the three of us met regularly to develop an understanding of the types of tasks computers can and cannot perform well. Our discus- sions produced both a good part of the theory that underlies this book and a large joint empirical project in which David led the way. This work resulted in an Autor, Levy, and Murnane article published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2003. A nontechnical discussion of much of the evidence in that article is presented in chapter 3 of this book. David also read an early draft of our manuscript and provided comments that were critical to sharpening our arguments. Thanks go also to Randy Davis and Peter Szolovits, professors at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Starting in early 1998 they answered our beginners’ questions with great pa- tience, a patience that eventually allowed us to grasp what they were telling us. We have an equally large debt to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, which provided most of the funding for the research. Hirsh Cohen of Sloan and Eric Wanner, President of Russell Sage, both took a risk that two labor economists, without a long com- viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS puter track record, could ultimately learn how computers were reshap- ing work. As our work moved into cognitive psychology, Wanner, with a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, served as a frequent sounding board, pointing out pieces to read and ideas to explore. We hope both men believe their risk has paid off. Additional financial support for the project came from MIT’s Indus- trial Performance Center and the MIT-Ford Motor Company Research Collaboration. Levy received other funding from the Daniel Rose Chair in Urban Economics and a one-month fellowship at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, and Murnane received support from the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professorship for Education and Society, and from the Spencer Foundation. The research would not have been possible without people who gave us access to observe in their places of work. They include Gary Abate and Roger Perron, Tom and Rozann Buckner, Andy Cooper, Mary Russo and the teachers at the Murphy School, Jim Soltis and his colleagues at IBM, John Behrens and his colleagues at Cisco Networking Academies, and managers and employees from “Cabot Bank” and “Medford Orbit.” Boeing and Fannie Mae also provided useful information. Other people who helped us by explaining the nature of their work and how computers were affecting it include Tim Guiney, Elliott Mahler, Stephen Saltz, and Jeff Silver. Joan Buchanan provided valuable insight about computers’ effects on healthcare. As our theory was taking shape, we faced the problem of how to tell our story in a way that would be accessible to interested readers. A number of people gave good advice in this regard, including Gene Bar- dach, Atul Gawande, Chuck Herz, Nick Lemann, Florence Levy, and David Wessell. Special thanks go to Flip Kissam, a professor of law at the University of Kansas, whose broad outlook on life enabled him to dream up the right title for an economists’ book. Still other people read parts or all of draft manuscripts to help cor- rect issues of substance. They include Rosemary Batt, Michael Feuer, Kurt Fischer, Patricia Graham, Ellen Guiney, Neil Heffernan, Jed Kolko, Ellen Lagemann, Richard Lester, Richard and Katherine Nelson, Paul Osterman, Edward Pauly, Thomas Payzant, James Rebitzer, Christine Sanni, and Robert Schwartz. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix Several graduate students helped us with research for the book. Thanks go to Anne Beamish, Isabelle Fernandez, Melissa Kearny, Cynthia Perry, Hani Shakeel, and Nancy Sharkey. Kathleen Donovan, a reference librarian at Harvard’s Gutman Li- brary, tracked down numerous references for us, in some cases antici- pating what we really wanted to know before we understood it. We thank Peter Dougherty, the social science editor at Princeton University Press, his colleague Tim Sullivan, and Suzanne Nichols of the Russell Sage Foundation for pushing us to clarify the book’s mes- sage and shepherding the manuscript to publication. Richard Murnane’s secretary, Wendy Angus, patiently kept track of the multiple versions of chapters and made sure that the right versions were sent to readers and to Peter. We dedicate this book to our families. Our children, David, Marin, John, and Daniel, would tease us about this book’s movie rights, but their good humor (most of the time) kept us going. Florence Levy gave us good skeptical questions and a mother’s encouragement. Most of all, we thank our wives, Katherine Swartz and Mary Jo Murnane, for shar- ing their lives with us and for always being there for us.
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