What is happening to middle skill workers?

Abstract

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The changing labour market for graduates from medium-level vocational education and training

“…For example, when ranking occupations by their 1980 wage, Autor and Dorn (2013 [3]) find that occupations at the top and bottom of the distribution experience growth in their employment shares in the period 1980-2005, whereas the employment share of occupations in the middle of the wage distribution declined. Similarly, Goos, Manning and Salomons (2014 [4]) find that job polarisation was pervasive across 16 European countries in the period 1993-2010, with the employment share of high-wage and low-wage occupations increasing and that of middle-wage occupation decreasing. It is important to note that these data refer to relative changes, and therefore do not give insight into whether or not employment levels in middle-skill jobs declined.…”

“…Individuals who are still in formal education are excluded from the analysis. 4,5 It is usually not straightforward to distinguish VET graduates and general education graduates (at ISCED levels 3 and 4) in typical datasets, such as labour force surveys. Information on educational attainment is often restricted to the highest obtained 3 While in principle it is also possible to separate tertiary-level qualifications into vocationally oriented and general qualifications, the distinction is less obvious than at lower levels of education.…”

“…Therefore, in this report no distinction is made between vocational and general tertiary education, and when referring to tertiary education graduates this includes all graduates from ISCED level 5 and above. 4 Being in education is defined as being a student/apprentice in formal education (in EU-LFS, PIAAC and EU-SILC data). Only in the panel analyses that use EU-SILC data, individuals are said to be in education if their self-reported current main activity status is 'pupil, student, further training, unpaid work experience'.…”

Defining and classifying AI in the workplace

“…At the other extreme of the AI sector is the "ghost work" (Gray and Suri, 2019 [29])so-called because of its invisibilityoften involved in labelling data, flagging X-rated or violent content and checking the outputs of AI. This work is typically associated with challenges such as low pay, limited access to benefits and training, and little job security.…”