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In the Wall Street Journal, David Wessel writes about research showing “strong demand for high-end workers,” increasing demand “for some workers at the low-end of the pay scale,” and “a sagging middle.” What’s going on? In part, the answer is the core argument of AWNM. Routine white-collar work is being shipped overseas and reduced to lines of code in software. But work that is high concept and high touch is becoming more valuable. In other words, it’s best to be a designer or software architect or boundary-crossing manager. But there’s also some economic security for people “who wipe brows in hospitals, care for kids, clear tables at bistros and stand guard in office-building lobbies,” because that work, too, is hard to outsource and automate. It’s the people in the middle — those doing rule-based, left-brain, get-the-right-answer work, who are feeling the pain. Take a look at the chart to the right, which appears in Wessel’s story. It’s a classic well curve — low in the center, high on the sides — and it could be the shape of things to come.
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