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Information Technology and Urban Labor Markets in the United States
Author(s) -
WolfPowers Laura
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
international journal of urban and regional research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.456
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1468-2427
pISSN - 0309-1317
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2427.00321
Subject(s) - citation , library science , urban planning , sociology , political science , regional science , computer science , engineering , civil engineering
The technologies that now dominate the production of goods and services, especially in advanced industrialized countries, have irrevocably changed the dynamics of the demand for and return to labor. Employment in technology-intensive occupations such as computer programming and network technology has increased at double the rate of US non-farm employment overall since the mid-1990s (US Department of Commerce, 2000), and thousands of other jobs in offices, factories and retail establishments demand technological infrastructures unneeded ten years ago. The ability to manipulate information, and to service and maintain the delivery systems by which information travels among users, has become increasingly linked to earning power. This is particularly true in cities. According to Rondinelli et al., the basis of urban economic development is now ‘a technologyand knowledge-based system of production and services’ (1998: 83) and those without the skills to participate in this system are confined to secondary, futureless roles in urban economies. Information technology has had a major impact on the geography of work, the competition among places (Moss, 1987; Brotchie et al., 1995; Massey, 1995; Atkinson, 1998; Graham, this issue), and the characteristics of urban labor markets. This article focuses on the skill dimension of IT’s impact on urban labor markets, exploring the implications of a ‘technology and knowledge-based system of production and services’ for the prospects, not of places, but of the people who work in them. In doing so, it dwells primarily on the US context, where people-oriented policies, particularly education and workforce development, have assumed a newly prominent role in public and academic conversations about urban vitality. In advanced urban economies, scholars and policymakers argue, measures conventionally pursued to attract firms — tax incentives, urban infrastructure, mega-projects focused on drawing tourists or convention-goers — are increasingly less effective, because human capital, not physical capital, has become the twenty-first century’s key competitive advantage (Clarke and Gaile, 1998; Rondinelli et