Abstract
The given paper assumes the existence of a correlation between the occupational structure and the mode of social and economic development of a country. It is shown that the modern stage of development in advanced economies could be described by the post-industrial phase with (a) the specific proportions in the occupational structure (predominance of professional managers and technical experts); (b) particular nature of work and the corresponding extent of labor division according to specialization and qualification (highly skilled labor with broad specialization and a new criterion of creativity included within qualifications). Within the certain historical framework these indicators, combined onto the entire scheme, produce the criteria to distinct different types of socio-economic development and arrange them in consistent order. The analysis of occupational structure of Russian population shows that the reforms of 1990s have facilitated the process of deindustrialization alongside with the growth of semi- and low-skilled jobs. According to the scheme, Russia seems to have reached the stage of the development that is similar to one of the 1950–1960s in the USA and the Europe.
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Notes
The data is representing the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Great Britain, USA (World Economic Outlook 2007, p 182)
This trend is also observed on the upward phase of the fifth Kondratieff wave that was caused by the rearrangement of the US economy during the depression in the mid-1970s. Later accumulation of capital has been encouraged by the shift from production to financial manipulations (Wallerstein 2009) that facilitated in developed countries employment of consultants and relative specialists in later 1990s (see Table 1). The idea of a correlation between Kondratieff waves each of one is characterized by a certain domain sector or sectors, technological system and culture, or so-called techno-economic paradigm (Kapas and Czegledi 2007), was generated firstly by I. Schumpeter. This idea became a major of his theory about the waves of technological innovations. Empirical verification of the assumption is accomplished by (Kleinknecht and Van der Panne 2006, p 118–127).
D. Bell considers a postindustrial society to be knowledge based one to the same extent as an industrial society to be a goods-producing one (Bell 1999: 467). Meanwhile, the term “post-industrial society” is not the only one that scholars use to describe the processes occurring in economic and social spheres of the modern world. There are the notions of a “programmed society” (Touraine 1971), a “society of services” (Singelmann 1978; Fuchs 1968), and even such metaphors as a “weightless society” (Leadbeater 2000), and etc.
It’s worth noting that the so-called concept of a creative class (a class of creative workers) as an independent subject of the social and economic life of modern society has become widespread during the past 20 years.
Industrial (or production and economic) relations are likely to be regarded as an independent factor of social and economic development; for example, in neo-Marxist analysis, in which they are derived from relations involving the ownership of capital goods.
Foremost, path analysis is meant.
For instance, in Charles Leadbeater’s (author of Living on Thin Air) opinion, to become successful in a “weightless economy”, one need to be quick-witted, clever and inventive, and possess the possibility of developing and supporting networks (Leadbeater 1999).
Currently, the issue of the occupational structure directly depends upon the methods for measuring an employee’s professional status throughout the world.
The analysis was done on “Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, RLMS-HSE” data for 1994–2010, conducted by the National Research University Higher School of Economics and ZAO “Demoscope” together with Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, headed by Barry M. Popkin, and the Institute of Sociology RAS (Polina Kozyreva and Mikhail Kosolapov). RLMS is a series of nationally representative surveys designed to monitor the effects of Russian reforms on the health and economic welfare of households and individuals in the Russian Federation. Data have been collected 19 times since 1992. Of these, 15 represent the RLMS Phase II (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/rlms-hse).
The International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88) is used as a main classification scheme of occupations by ILO. As a result, ISCO-88 is widely used in a number of datasets. The RLMS database is distributed with computed variables in which occupations are already coded and aggregated according to the Classification of Occupations ISCO-88, based upon rules developed in Geneva in 1988 without any adaptation to Russian realities.
Adaptation of ISCO-88 undertaken by the author was based upon the fundamentals of empiric structuralism (Blau 1977), according to which the occupational structure is studied through the range of positions identified in virtue of the most significant characteristics of jobs in modern economy. For further details, see (Anikin 2009).
The foremost reason for this is a disagreement between the workforce structure and the structure of the positions available, such that many degree holders had to take a position not corresponding in any way with their formal qualifications. (Lukiyanova et al. 2011).
While the cross-tabulations are analyzed the criterion of statistical significance is presented by the deviance (residual) of observed count from expected count that is measured in terms standard deviation (Adjusted Residual [Zij = (Nij−Eij)/σij]). As the variables are assumed to be independent from each other, the following assumption should work—the more observations we have the more likely the random quantity will be normally distributed with expected value of zero and variance equal to one: N ~ (0,1). Standard deviation is calculated under the assumption that Nij is random quantity with distribution \( \sigma_{ij}^{2} = \{ N_{i \cdot } \cdot N_{ \cdot j} (N - N_{i \cdot } )(N - N_{ \cdot j} )/N^{2} \cdot (N - 1)\} \). It is scarcely possible for Zij to have more than three deviations, as the probability of such an outcome is less then 0.0027 (lower 0.27 % from 100 %, according to the Three-sigma rule). That’s why when one obtains the value of Zij more than 3, it is general practice to accept that i and j values of X and Y are bounded. Meanwhile, usually the given criteria are weakened to the significance level of 5 % (1.65σij). If Adjusted Residual ≥2.0, then it corresponds to the significance level of accepting the null hypothesis (that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena) with the probability level of 5 %, p < 0.05; if Adj. Res. ≥2.6, then p < 0.01; when Adj. Res. ≥3.3, p < 0.001.
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Anikin, V.A. Mode of Socio-Economic Development and Occupational Structure: The Case of Contemporary Russia. Transit Stud Rev 19, 397–415 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11300-013-0256-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11300-013-0256-8
Keywords
- Occupational structure
- Socio-economic development
- Knowledge based economy
- Industrialization
- Labour potential
- Modernization
- Russia