the wage premium for digital skills (highlighted above) has nearly doubled since 2002. That means that the mean pay of workers in higher-level digital occupations (about $73,000) now more than doubles the $30,000 wage of low-digital workers.
…women—despite having slightly higher mean digital scores—remain heavily under-represented in highly digital computer and engineering occupations (but over-represented in office admin, education, and health occupations). Likewise, blacks are overrepresented in medium-digital occupations like office support and health care support, while Hispanics are greatly underrepresented in highly digital tech positions and overrepresented in low-digital domains such as farming, construction, and building and grounds maintenance.
… the digital rich among metro areas appear to be getting even richer, and now—as a consequence—are pulling away from the rest of metros on basic measures of prosperity.
Turning to the full report by Muro and co-authors, I find
In 2002, 56 percent of the jobs studied required low amounts of digital skills. Nearly 40 percent of jobs required medium digital skills and just 5 percent required high digital skills.
A lot has changed. By 2016, the share of jobs requiring high digital skills had jumped to 23 percent. The share requiring medium digital skills rose to 48 percent. And in a huge shift, the share of jobs requiring low digital skills fell from 56 to 30 percent.
Keeping up with current technology has been a recognized necessity since irrigation and crop rotation became a thing. Of course there’s a greater demand for people who have recognized the need to keep their skills current, and of course those people are compensated accordingly. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with supply and demand.
I am also a bit surprised that there is still a significant premium for older guys (> 45) who have been around the block, even if they do not have experience with the latest hot invented-yesterday fad. Older guys are reliable, can work very long hours, have seen and usually avoid the traps and rat-holes, and don’t mind frictions such as process and documentation overhead that drive young guys nuts.
We are building something in the ‘cloud’ so high level digital skills are needed. Once it is built, we can go back to low level skills, like blogging.