Structural Unemployment does not spare the even buzzing Technology Industry

Structural Unemployment has become a big problem in developed countries where middle class jobs are being permanently destroyed. The advent of modern communications and technology has made a lot of the old jobs redundant . Modern Technology is destroying entire supply chains , companies and jobs in a painful bout of creative destruction. Many of the workers cannot be retrained and the longer they are out of the work force, the harder it is for them to get back in. One of the main grievances of the Anti-Wall Street Movement comes from this front. Governments are trying hard to support these people but many feel that they are not doing enough.

Even the Technology Industry in the USA which is seeing a renewed boom with a slew of IPOs from social media companies like LinkedIn, Facebook , Groupon and others is facing this problem . Old technology companies like HP, Cisco, Sony are firing tens of thousands of workers as they try to compete in the fast changing domain. It is hard to see where these workers trained in legacy software/ hardware can find new jobs. Technology companies like Nokia and RIMM pushed against the wall while Apple too have been on a firing spree as they try to reduce costs to shrinking revenue and margins.

Along-with structural unemployment factors, global labor cost arbitrage is shifting thousands of jobs (see IBM) to developing countries like India and China where engineers and scientists can be hired at a fraction of the cost . Not only low end jobs but also highly skilled jobs in R&D are being shifted wholesale to these countries. In the current environment capital has a massive upper-hand over labor and leading to social tensions around the world