Forty Years of Change in Labour Supply and Demand by Skill Level – Technical Progress, Labour Costs and Social Change

Abstract

[eng] In France, the proportion of unskilled non manual jobs is higher today than forty years ago, especially in personal service sectors. However, these unskilled jobs are only growing in occupations where employers enjoy significant reductions in social contributions and only in periods when these reductions are mplemented. Throughout the same period, the diffusion of new technologies systematically appears to be favourable to higher and intermediate level occupations. Technological change contributes less to a polarisation between higher level and lower level jobs than to the emergence of a society where intermediate level jobs take an increasingly central place. However, the joint rise in higher and intermediate level jobs is not strong enough to absorb the influx of high school and college graduates. An increasing number of graduates are forced to compete with less educated workers in lower level job positions. The result is both an increase in the occupational downgrading of graduates and the persistence of very high unemployment rates for non graduates.