The New World of Work

Advanced digital technologies are swiftly changing the kinds of skills that jobs require. How are improvements in digital technology changing the nature of human work? A team of researchers from the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Masdar Institute in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, have taken a close look at that question. In a paper called "Racing With and Against the Machine: Changes in Occupational Skill Composition in an Era of Rapid Technological Advance," Frank MacCrory, George Westerman and Erik Brynjolfsson of the MIT Sloan School and Yousef Alhammadi of the Masdar Institute studied the U.S. government's O*NET database of occupational skill requirements in 2006 and 2014 and analyzed the types of skills that jobs required in both years. Their paper was named the best conference paper at the 2014 International Conference on Information Systems.