Ex.18. Scan the text below and give headlines to each paragraph.

 

(1) The market has changed drastically for skilled and unskilled labourers. There is a growing demand for skills, particularly specialized skills. As a result, 1) … Unskilled labour, when measured by educational attainment, refers to jobs that require a high school

 

 

diploma only, or could even be filled by a high school dropout. Skilled labour requires additional skills or education. While the demand for unskilled labour has decreased, the labour pool has also significantly decreased. Unskilled labourers are dropping out of the job market or increasing their skill level.

 

(2) Skilled labour refers to labour that requires workers who have specialized training or alearned skill-set to perform the work. These workers can be either blue-collar or white-collar workers, with varied levels of training or education. 2) … Examples of skilled labour occupations are: electricians, law enforcement officers, computer operators, financial technicians, and administrative assistants. Some skilled labour jobs have become so specialized that there are worker shortages.

 

(3) Unskilled labour does not require workers to have special training or skills. The jobs thatrequire unskilled labour are continually shrinking due to technological and societal advances.

 

Jobs that previously required little or no training now require training. 3) … Examples of remaining unskilled labour occupations generally include farm labourers, grocery clerks, hotel maids, and general cleaners and sweepers.

 

(4) Manual labour (manual labor inAmerican English) or manual work is physical work done

 

by people, most especially in contrast to that done by machines, and also to that done by working animals. 4) … For most of human prehistory and history, manual labour and its close cousin, animal labour, have been the primary ways that physical work has been accomplished. Mechanisation and automation, which reduce the need for human and animal labour in production, have existed for centuries, but it was only starting in the 19^th century that they began to significantly expand and to change human culture. To be implemented, they require that sufficient technology exist and that its capital costs be justified by the amount of future wages that they will obviate.

 

(5) Although nearly any work can potentially have skill and intelligence applied to it, many jobs that mostly comprise manual labour — 5) … — often may be done successfully (if not masterfully) by unskilled or semiskilled workers. Thus there is a partial but significant correlation between manual labour and unskilled or semiskilled workers. Based on economic and social conflict of interest, people may often distort that partial correlation into an exaggeration that equates manual labour with lack of skill; with lack of any potential to apply skill (to a task) or to develop skill (in a worker); and with low social class. Throughout human existence the latter has involved a spectrum of variants, from slavery (with stigmatisation of the slaves as "subhuman"), to caste or caste-like systems, to subtler forms of inequality.

 

Economic competition often results in businesses trying to buy labour at the lowest possible cost (for

 

example, through offshoring or by employing foreign workers) or to obviate it entirely (through mechanisation and automation).

 

(6) Mechanisation and automation strive to reduce the amount of manual labour required for production. The motives for this reduction of effort may be to remove drudgery from people's lives; to lower the unit cost of production; or, as mechanisation evolves into automation, to bring greater flexibility (easier redesign, lower lead time) to production. 6) …,

 

such as providing motive force or tractive force (locomotives; traction engines; marine steam engines;

 

early cars, trucks, and tractors); digging, loading, and unloading bulk materials (steam shovels, early loaders); or weaving uncomplicated cloth (early looms). For example, Henry Ford described his efforts to mechanise agricultural tasks such as tillage as relieving drudgery by transferring physical burdens from human and animal bodies to iron and steel machinery. Automation helps to bring mechanisation to more complicated tasks that require

 

 

finer dexterity, decision making based on visual input, and a wider variety of intelligent movements. Thus even tasks that once could not be successfully mechanised, such as shelf stocking or many kinds of fruit and vegetable picking, tend to undergo process redesign (either formal or informal) leading to ever smaller amounts of manual labour.

 

(7) Historically, unskilled workers had plentiful employment opportunities in America. From farming to factory jobs, 7) …, even if this meant transitioning from a farming community to factories in the cities. Unskilled labourers earned less money than skilled labourers, but during the 1980s and 1990s the wage gap between skilled and non-skilled labourers began to grow. Today the job market demands increasing skill levels. Many jobs that were once considered unskilled labour now demand semi- or mid-skill labour.

 

(8) Semi- or mid-skill labour addresses the increase in demand for skills, even for lesscomplex jobs. 8) … However, they do not require highly specialized skills. In a 2010 study released by the Indiana Institute for Working Families, more than half of the jobs in that state were mid-skill. Examples of mid-skill jobs include truck drivers, typists and customer service representatives. These jobs generally require more than a high-school diploma, but less than a college degree.

 

(9) Education can be received in a variety of manners, and is acknowledged through various means. 9) … (According to Greenspan, math skill more than anything else is required to achieve skilled-job status and is the one skill too many high school grads lack).

· On-the-job training - (Examples: cashier, fashion model, farmhand, office clerk).

 

· Apprenticeship - (Examples: carpenter, electrician, mason, mechanic, plumber, welder). · Vocational certification - (Examples: chef, cosmetologist, dental assistant, paralegal).

 

· Associate Degree - (Examples: commercial artist, draftsman, licensed practical nurse).

 

· Undergraduate Degree - (Examples: accountant, teacher, registered nurse, software

developer).

 

· Professional Degree - (Examples: architect, dentist, engineer, lawyer, medical doctor).

 

· Graduate Degree - (Examples: astronaut, mathematician, nurse practitioner, scientist, university professor).

 

(10) In modern industry, there has been a change in the concentration of skilled workers from the areas of past economic might e. g. steel, automobile, textile and chemicals to the

 

more recent (21st century) industry developments e. g. computers, telecommunications and information technology which is commonly stated to represent a plus rather than a minus for the standard of living.

 

(11) Due to globalization, regional shortages of skilled workers, migration, outsourcing, and other factors, the methods of procuring skilled workers has changed in recent years.

 

(12) All countries are in a process of change and transition which makes possible the migration of skilled workers from places of lower to higher opportunities in training and better working conditions. 10) …, it is the lack of security, opportunity and suitable rewards in the homeland that fundamentally makes this massive movement of people possible, going from places of lesser development to affluent societies. Some developing countries see the migration of domestically trained professionals abroad not as a drain but as a gain, a "brain bank" from which to draw at a price; for these professionals, on their return with their accumulated skills, would contribute to the growth of the homeland; cultural factors favour the return of these professionals for a short or a long while.