Computers and The Increase of Labor and Wage Inequality in The 1980’s :: History Technology Essays

Computers and The Increase of Labor and Wage Inequality in The 1980s Although computer technology dates confirm to at least the 1940s, microprocessors were first introduced on a wide scale in manufacturing in the 1970s. It has been noted that mainframe computers started to be used in production line in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Computers have seemed to grow more rapidly ever since the Apple II was born in 1977 and the IBM PC in 1981. PC (personal computers) spread rapidly in the 80s and 90s and have been upgrading ever since. It has been said that during this increase in popularity and use of computers the fight inequality and wage difference has been increasing as well. Throughout this paper we will discuss reasons why computers are to blame and why computers have had cipher to do with economic increase of skilled educated workers and a decrease in need for unskilled and uneducated workers. Increase in the growth tempo of the demand of more skilled workers due to the pace of the technological work from 1970 to the present has been one of the arguments against computers causing inequality. From the 1970s the pace of work has been faster, the work corrupt has been greater because demand has gone up, and many jobs have become more difficult to learn. There are no longer mills where education and ofttimes knowledge was needed to get the job done. Work has gotten much more involved and complex. The traffic of high school drop outs have fallen from 64.4% in 1940 to 9.8% in 1996, and the employment of college graduates have risen from 9.3% to 41.6%. Although computers have been around that whole time there is no way they caused a 54.6% decrease in the employment of high school drop outs. It has also been said that there has been an expansion slowdown from what the country was used to in the beginning half of this century from the 1970s, so this has allowed companies to pay one educated worker rather than paying two of three uneducated workers that did t he same job. Over the years unions have also began to unfreeze causing some of those unskilled workers how were once protected by contracts to a given union to become no longer demanded. Many of those unskilled workers who fly being unneeded have noticed a dramatic pay decrease. Many people might think, What are you talking about, in the 1940s they were qualification like five to ten dollars a day.