Computers and equipment controlled by computers are also being used at increasing levels of complexity as more and more jobs incorporate the new technology. Computer skills are valued highly in the labour market. Even the fairly modest skill of working a word-processor commands a 13 percent pay premium over a job that does not require the skill, after taking all other factors such as education and experience into account.
The project developed a new method of measuring skills utilised in the workplace which was based on adapting job analysis as used by occupational psychologists advising employers. Skill changes could be addressed without relying on qualifications held or on occupation as the measure of skill as have previous analyses.
The survey of nearly 2,500 jobs revealed that skills in use have increased - in 1997, for instance, twenty-four per cent of jobs needed a qualification above A-level standard against twenty per cent in 1986 - and that jobs requiring training of less than three months had fallen (fifty-seven percent, down from sixty-six percent) while jobs needing more than two years training had risen (twenty-nine percent against twenty-two percent a decade earlier).
Women's jobs showed the most pronounced increase in skills over the period, from fifty-one per cent to sixty-five percent of jobs which need some qualification whereas for men's jobs the increase was marginal, from sixty-nine per cent to seventy-one per cent.
Skills which are linked to higher pay include some which have come to the fore in the 1990s as characteristic of the modern work organisation. As well as computer skills, they include professional communication (making presentations, for instance), problem-solving and, to a lesser extent, verbal skills. But numerical skills are only more highly rewarded when they are linked with computer use, while client communication skills and "horizontal communication skills" (listening carefully to colleagues, for instance) do not command more money.
People least likely to be in a position to improve their skills are part-timers, self-employed, over-50s and those still in lower status occupations.
Looked at from the perspective of jobs, pay is better in jobs which require a long period of learning and specify higher qualifications, and which use transferable skills (not skills specific to a particular company).
As for the individual who wants to go on learning, the authors say, they should choose a "modern" organisation which uses Investors in People and Quality Circles, for instance, which encourage their employees to be involved, and communicate with them.
For further information, contact Professor Francis Green
telephone 01227-
827305
e-mail: gfg@ukc.ac.uk
or
Michael Wylie, Lesley Lilley, Jacky Clake, ESRC External Relations
telephone
01793-413122/413119/413117.
NOTE FOR EDITORS
The ESRC is the UK's largest independent funder of research and postgraduate
training in social and economic issues. It currently has an annual budget of
around £65 million from the Government.