ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between new technology, new jobs and unemployment. One of the aspects of new technology which has attracted the greatest attention is its likely effect on employment. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of studies were published, some from usually authoritative sources, forecasting dramatic job losses in the industrialised countries as a consequence of the imminent deployment of new technology. In Germany a study by the Siemens electrical equipment manufacturing company estimated that by 1985 over 40 per cent of all clerical jobs in Germany would disappear as a result of the use of new technology. Indirect job gains are likewise created elsewhere in the economy by the multiplier effects of any initial increase in profits and other incomes arising from the direct deployment of new technology. There will be other positive indirect effects on employment.
