Fear of massive unemployment have greeted technological changes ever since the Industrial Revolution. Far from destroying jobs, however, rapid technological advance generally has created many new ones. In the quarter-century following World War II, for example, the industrial economies were flooded with new technologies, while unemployment shrank to exceptionally low levels Yet there is good reason to take seriously the recent outpouring of concern that microelectronic technologies will have a fundamental impact on both the numbers and types of jobs in the industrial world in the coming decades.

Central to this concern is the pervasiveness of microelectronics The microelectronic revolution could affect employment in enterprises ranging from steelworks to banks since no technology in history has had such a broad range of potential applications in the workplace. For another thing, goods that incorporate microelectronic devices generally require significantly less labor to produce than the goods they replace, a fact that extends the employment implications of the technology well beyond its direct impacts on automation. And a third cause of apprehension is the speed with which the technology is advancing. Although microelectronic controls will not sweep through the industrial world overnight, most experts expect them to be firmly established in production processes, products, and daily activities over the next two decades.