Mode of socio-economic development and occupational structure: the case of contemporary Russia

The given paper assumes the existence of a correlation between the occupational structure and the mode of social and economic development of a country. It is shown that the modern stage of development in advanced economies could be described by the post-industrial phase with (a) the specific proportions in the occupational structure (predominance of professional managers and technical experts); (b) particular nature of work and the corresponding extent of labor division according to specialization and qualification (highly skilled labor with broad specialization and a new criterion of creativity included within qualifications). Within the certain historical framework these indicators, combined onto the entire scheme, produce the criteria to distinct different types of socio-economic development and arrange them in consistent order. The analysis of occupational structure of Russian population shows that the reforms of 1990s have facilitated the process of deindustrialization alongside with the growth of semi- and low-skilled jobs. According to the scheme, Russia seems to have reached the stage of the development that is similar to one of the 1950–1960s in the USA and the Europe

Outer Continental Shelf Study

This survey report discusses deepwater projects centered in the Gulf Coast. Their study is interested in vendors or contractors supplying the equipment used on the deck and process in extracting oil. The authors are also interested in the socioeconomic effects of the oil extracting on local communities

We can work it out: the impact of technological change on the demand for low skill workers

There is little doubt that technology has had the most profound effect on altering the tasks that we humans do in our jobs. Economists have long speculated on how technical change affects both the absolute demand for labour as a whole and the relative demands for different types of labour. In recent years, the idea of skill-biased technical change has become the consensus view about the current impact of technology on labour demand, namely that technical change leads to an increase in the demand for skilled relative to unskilled labour painting a bleak future for the employment prospects of less-skilled workers. But, drawing on a recent paper by Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) about the impact of technology on the demand for different types of skills, this paper argues that the demand in the least-skilled jobs may be growing. But, it is argued that employment of the less-skilled is increasingly dependent on physical proximity to the moreskilled and may also be vulnerable in the long-run to further technological developments