Has the reorganisation of global production radically changed demand for labour?

The organisation of global production has undergone profound changes. Technological progress has spread widely through all sectors of the economy and has also helped to open up the production chains. The emerging – essentially Asian – countries have taken advantage of this trend towards globalisation and have gradually become the biggest manufacturers in the world. It is mainly capital and, to a lesser extent, highly educated workers, that have gained from the growth of their industrial segment. In Europe, there is also an evident impact on activity and employment. The composition of demand for labour has changed greatly over the past fifteen years. Medium-skilled occupations have come under pressure. These jobs have a foreseeable, repetitive content threatened by technological progress, or they belong to industrial segments which have been relocated in emerging countries. On the other hand, the reorganisation of global production has had less impact on highly skilled and low skilled jobs. The former are often ancillary to information and communication technologies, while the latter generally entail repeated interaction between the service provider and the recipient. These developments therefore point to a polarisation of demand for labour. The article describes this dual tendency towards the reorganisation of global production and the polarisation of demand for labour, and examines the link between them in the recent period, by using new measures of the fragmentation of production.