Patterns of Skill Change: Upskilling, Deskilling or the Polarization of Skills?

The debate about the long-term direction of skill trends has occupied a central place in economic sociology, but there has been a virtual absence of relevant representative data. This paper draws on a major new source of survey data to assess three perspectives on skill change. Using a number of different indicators of skill, it examines whether changes in the occupational structure do reflect an expansion of higher skilled jobs. It then considers the extent to which people have experienced upskilling or deskilling within occupational classes. Finally, it looks at the implications of the growth of the service sector, of technological change and of gender for the distribution of skills and for the experience of skill change. It concludes that, while there is little evidence of extensive deskilling, there has been a marked tendency towards the polarization of skills in the 1980s.