Technological Change and the Skill Acquisition of Young Workers

Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and six proxies for industry rates of technological change, we study the impact of technological change on skill accumulation among young male workers in the manufacturing sector during the time period 1987 through 1992. Production workers in manufacturing industries with higher rates of technological change are more likely to receive formal company training, but not other types of training. An important finding is that, while more educated workers are more likely to receive formal company training, the training gap between the highly educated and the less educated narrows, on average, as the rate of technological change increases. The positive effect of technological change on hours of training is due largely to an increase in the incidence of training, not in the number of hours per training spell.