Job Skills and Schooling: A Class Analysis of Entry Requirements and Underemployment
Keywords:
job skills, schooling, class structure, entry requirements, underemploymentAbstract
This paper explores how schooling reproduces the general class structure of the Ontario workforce, particularly the division between mental and manual labour. The general literature on job skill levels is reviewed, and educational entry requirements are distinguished from other aspects of job skills. A supposed skill division of mental and manual labour between corporate executives and intermediate employees, on the one hand, and proletarian workers, on the other, is posited as being fundamental for the reproduction of the class structure of advanced capitalist economies. Data from a 1984 Ontario survey of self-reported job entry requirements and educational attainments and of the congruence between requirements and attainments are analyzed for the entire employed workforce and for different class positions. The findings suggest little aggregate-level upgrading of job entry requirements in Ontario in recent decades with the gap between the corporate executives and intermediate employees and the proletarian workers in post-secondary requirements remaining large. Although educational attainments are somewhat more likely to exceed requirements among younger employees, the incidence of such underemployment appears to be quite similar across most class positions. Hence, at least with regard to job entry requirements, the division between mental and manual labour appears to have been reproduced effectively to date in the employed workforce.
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