On-The-Job Training and Adjustment to Technological Change

In the absence of technological change, on-the-job training takes place in the process of production. When change occurs, training also takes place in the process of innovation, installation, and debugging of new equipment. Analytically, training, production, and innovations should be viewed as joint products of a single process. The joint product, single process relationship entrains mechanisms which act to prevent structural imbalances in the labor market. The relationship also suggests that imbalances are unlikely to appear as job vacancies matched by workers unemployed but unqualified to fill the vacant jobs. Finally, the nature of on-the-job training and its role in adjustments to technological change suggests new interpretations of labor productivity and job vacancy data.