Low-skill industrial work

Abstract

This paper reflects on the development prospects of ‘simple’ industrial labour in advanced societies. The term ‘simple labour’ denotes tasks of low complexity that make no great demands on employees and require only limited qualifications to perform. One can also speak of ‘lowskill industrial work’. For quite some time, mainstream research has been of the opinion that the permanent trend of upgrading of skills makes this type of work increasingly irrelevant for the development of gainful employment in advanced societies. Consequently, low-skill industrial labour has been seen to become a more and more negligible factor in the course of globalisation because the production processes needing it are increasingly being relocated to developing countries.