In the past thirty years a huge shift has
been noticed in the European structure of
employment. The booming manufacturing
sector, traditional employer until the
seventies, slowly and gradually gave place
to what many researchers call ‘knowledge
intensive services’ and the supplementary
‘all other services’. The Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
defines knowledge intensive services as
business, high tech and communication
services, financial services and health and
education services. All other services
include retail, hospitality, transport,
public administration and other community,
social and personal services [1].
A survey covering the thirty years period
between 1978 and 2007, using data from the
UK Office for National Statistics and
building on the above OECD definitions,
demonstrates that: In 1978 employees in
manufacturing slightly exceeded those
employed in knowledge intensive services by
approximately 28 to 26 percent. All other
services ranked first with a 35 percent. By
2007, though, just eleven percent of
employees worked in manufacturing while an
approximate 45 percent worked in knowledge
intensive services, and an approximate 38
percent in all other services [2]. At this
point, it must be noted that manufacturing
today includes both knowledge based and
other sectors, while knowledge based
enterprises exist in all industrial sectors
and many of the processes characterising the
knowledge economy are taking place in both
low and high tech sectors.
Within the European Union (EU) it became
clear, early enough, that this shift to the
knowledge based economy could not be fed by
its own work force alone. The Lisbon Agenda,
agreed in the year 2000, set the ambitious
objective for the EU member states to become
the world’s most competitive,
knowledge-based economy by the year 2010, a
goal which today, only a year away from
target year, seems unattainable [3]. Some
years later, an EU report charged with the
objective to assess the Lisbon Agenda,
concluded that “Europe needs to dramatically
improve its attractiveness to researchers,
as too many young scientists continue to
leave Europe on graduating, notably for the
US. Too few of the brightest and best from
elsewhere in the world choose to live and
work in Europe.” [4] And in 2007, Commission
President José Manuel Barroso announced the
EU ‘Blue Card’, aiming at attracting highly
skilled migrants, with the following
statement: “Labour migration into Europe
boosts our competitiveness and therefore our
economic growth. It also helps tackle
demographic problems resulting from our
aging population. This is particularly the
case for highly skilled labour. With today’s
proposal for an EU Blue Card we sent a clear
signal: highly skilled migrants are welcome
in the EU” [5].
As a result, lately, many EU member states
launched the first daring steps of new,
point-based migration systems that will
eventually replace the existing, old
fashioned work permit schemes in order to
help their businesses recruit the skills
needed from abroad and thus transform their
economies into a global hub of worldwide
talents. But the shift into the knowledge
economy is also associated with high level
investments in human and organisational
capital, which eventually lead to higher
levels of workplace innovation. The
interaction between technological change,
workplace innovation and a highly skilled
workforce has had notable impact on the
nature of work over the last twenty years.
There are two areas that need to be
carefully addressed by the European
governments. First, they must take a close
look at the labour market for highly skilled
workers in the emerging knowledge economy
and to find out whether there is a global
labour market for knowledge workers; and if
yes, what it looks like. These workers, who
are most likely to be in direct global
competition, fall in one of the following
two broad categories: researchers or highly
skilled migrants, which are examined in more
detail in section three. The second
challenge, ahead of Europe, is to explore
how much of the above noted shift in
employment is driven by Small- and
Medium-size Enterprises. Furthermore, to
detect if the noted transformation towards a
knowledge based economy is accompanied with
a shift to innovative and technology-based
start ups or whether big corporations are
still considered most effective for
generating and exploiting new forms of
knowledge. Answering the above two
questions, even if it may not solve the
problem, it will at least provide Europe
with further stimulus to employment and
enterprise growth in the emerging,
knowledge-dominated economy ahead of us.
Please contact me
to further explore this topics or the
concerns I have highlighted.
Notes
[1] OECD (2006) Science, Technology and
Industry Outlook 2006
[2] Brinkley, I. (2008) “How Knowledge is
Reshaping the Economic Life of Nations”,
Economy Interim Report, The Work Foundation
[3] Lisbon Agenda (2000) European
Commission, “The Lisbon European Council –
An Agenda of Economic and Social Renewal for
Europe”, Contribution of the European
Commission to the Special European Council
in Lisbon, 23-24 March 2000, Doc/00/7 28
February 2000
[4] EU Report (2004) From the High Level
Group chaired by Wim Kok, “Facing the
Challenge: The Lisbon strategy for growth
and employment”, November 2004
[5] Commission President José Manuel Barroso
(2007) “Making Europe more attractive to
highly skilled migrants and increasing the
protection of lawfully residing and working
migrants”, Press release, IP/07/1575,
Brussels, 23 October 2007
