The Crisis in Male Wages - Richard Florida - Business - The Atlantic - 1 views
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The returns to analytical skill rise consistently across the skill distribution; moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile increases earnings by more than $25,000. The same basic pattern holds for social intelligence skills, like teamwork, communication, people management, and so forth;
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"men's work" as it was once understood--low skill, relatively well-paid physical labor (good factory jobs, in a nutshell)--is clearly the victim of the deep structural change in the economy. For the past several decades, the combination of technology and globalization has not only reduced the number and share of high-wage, low-skill production jobs that were once the province of male breadwinners. On top of this, the rate of return to these physically-skilled jobs has declined.