Information Technology Use and Employment Change in New Zealand Industries

Abstract

The last quarter of the 20^th century was marked by rapid uptake of new information and communication technologies (ICT) with far-reaching effects in workplace organization. These changes have consequent effects on demand patterns in the labour market, with less educated workers facing declining opportunities. In this paper Census of Population data from 1991, 1996 and 2001 are used to investigate changes in employment demand by education level for full-time workers in 58 industries covering the entire New Zealand economy. To explore the role of technical change, data on industry use of computers from the 1996 Input-Output tables are related to the changes in employment levels for workers at different levels of education. The findings suggest that declining employment opportunities for workers who only have school level qualifications or less are strongly concentrated amongst the industries with higher ICT uptake.