Deskilling
In economics, deskilling is the process by which skilled labor within an industry or economy is eliminated by the introduction of technologies operated by semi- or unskilled workers. This results in cost savings due to lower investment in human capital, and reduces barriers to entry, weakening the bargaining power of the human capital.
Deskilling is the decline in working positions through the machinery or technology introduced to separate workers from the production process.
Deskilling can also refer to individual workers specifically. The term refers to a person becoming less proficient over time. Examples of how this can occur include changes in one's job definition, moving to a completely different field, chronic underemployment, and being out of the workforce for extended periods of time. It can also apply to immigrants who held high-skilled jobs in their countries of origin but cannot find equivalent work in their new countries and so are left to perform low-skilled work they are overqualified for. This can often be the result of problems in getting foreign-issued professional qualifications and degrees recognized, or discriminatory hiring practices that favor native-born workers. In addition, relying on technological decision aids and automation has been found to contribute to individual workers' deskilling: in the presence of reliable technological aids, workers tend to decrease their cognitive engagement with the work task.
It has been criticized for decreasing quality, demeaning labor, undermining community, or entrenching harmful but less intensive practices.
History and arguments of classical economic theory
Deskilling as a byproduct of technological advancements, generally driven by production innovation, can first be examined during the Industrial Revolution in late 18th century England. On the other hand, skilling is also seen as a direct consequence of technological advancement, whereby workers have the opportunity to adopt new operational knowledge through upskilling.The stance on deskilling within technological advancement and its impact on the division of labour is politically polarizing. Adam Smith and prominent socialist advocates such as Karl Marx regarded technological development as having a deskilling-bias, with advancements in economies of scale and reduction in required workers as by laws of diminishing returns rapidly increasing investor profit. This liberal view theorizes that deskilling's resultant simplification of worker tasks or replacement of previously skilled workers reduced opportunities, bargaining power and was utilized as a weapon by the bourgeoisie to enforce a classist struggle that shrinks the middle class.
Alternatively, pro-capitalist ideology supported by Charles Babbage argues that technological change embodied by inducement mechanisms support the skill-enhancing opportunities of workers, rather than simplifying workers roles. This neoliberal economic view saw deskilling as an unintentional byproduct, rather than an envisaged motivator.
However, the establishment of classical economic theory dictates that technical change directly affects wealth, consumption, employment, and income distribution. Although innovation is essential for growing economies, the structural byproduct of such advancements are argued by classical economic theory to increase, diminish or shift the demand for skilled and unskilled labourers. In this case, classical political economists view that the 18th century Industrial Revolution was driven for the purpose of deskilling incumbent workers is not empirically supported. Regardless, the byproduct of such technological advancement promoted the skilling of proportionately fewer workers. Economic historians support that there is no clear deskilling tendency within 18th and 19th century economies but rather a combination of deskilling, skilling and skill-displacement.
19th century statistics support the growth of skilled workers, including high-skilled and low-skilled workers, as reaching above 60% of the English and Welsh population. However, this statistic fails to mention the growth in highly skilled or low-skilled workers, thus providing no evidence to support the claim that deskilling was the prominent outcome.
There was considerable growth in the share of unskilled workers from 20% in 1700 to 39% in 1850. This was a direct result of manufacturing innovations requiring less-skilled workers to operate certain machinery, however, neither confirms nor denies the deskilling of existing workers, although disproportionately fewer skilled workers upskilled during the industrial revolution. Furthermore, the industrial revolution incurred unprecedented economic growth, thus requiring more employees from previously unemployed demographics such as women and children who were largely unskilled.
Documented outcomes of innovation also support the increase in apprenticeships and literacy throughout the industrial revolution, growing the middle class, however, proportionately less than the upper-class, once again supporting the ambiguity of deskilling-bias in a historic context.
1970s
The same arguments for and against deskilling-bias in technical change were made in the 20th century, particularly during Gerald Ford's US presidency from 1974 to 1977. Rather than industrial reform causing worker displacement, the exponential growth of the neoliberal economy and various innovations of technological advancements presented a contemporary form of skill-displacement.Harry Braverman's 1974 book Labor and Monopoly Capital popularized the idea that the degradation of work inflicted by technological development created a new middle class that was reskilled, but not necessarily better equipped. The 1974-75 period presented the first economic crisis in the U.S. since the great depression, after experiencing massive economic growth since World War II. In experiencing this crisis, Braverman reasserted the importance of the Marxist law of accumulation on class polarization under conditions of monopoly capitalism, warning that neoliberal economies could experience a shrinking of the middle class.
On the contrary, Andre Gorz argued in his 1982 book Farewell to the Working Class, that the working class had been replaced by an unskilled non-class of non-workers as a result of technological change promoting deskilling, unemployment, and dissociation of labourers from the process. Gorz's argument was disputed by Braverman, who claimed that although these trends existed it was a result of technological change's dynamic process that decomposed and recomposed the working class. This view assumes that the unemployment being experienced was mostly structural and the working conditions were integral in the long-term evolution of the working class, in line with Marx's general law of accumulation.
21st century
In the 21st century economy much of the world operates within a regulated capitalist framework rather than promoting the neoliberal environment that drove the 20th century. Regardless, as technological growth creates exponential levels of innovation, furthering both economies of scale and scope, modern deskilling presents a relevant issue to the division of labour and class proletarianism.Evidently, economic growth of the 21st century has been driven by globalisation and the digital age that has promoted an increase in individual consumer demand and thus encouraged market innovations. These innovations are largely driven by technology, which has produced unprecedented restructuring of the labour force that removes previously skilled workers from the manufacturing and professional process. A major difference in modern deskilling is the increased relevance modern innovations have not only on blue-collar labourers, but white-collar professionals, impacting teachers, analysts, lawyers, bankers and pilots, who had previously maintained a relatively steady level of skill share throughout the industrial revolution.
Professional
Deprofessionalization, whereby professional workers are experiencing deskilling largely due to automation, has become more prevalent within the 21st century. Deprofessionalization occurs as automation substitutes causes professionals to lose previously unique attributes such as experience and knowledge within a specialised field. This has been examined closely within para-lawyers, where database innovations have reduced the requirement of previously necessary qualifications, with reprofessionalisation taking place as "the more that tasks can be compartmentalized and the more that knowledge-based tools can be applied, the easier it is to assign the task to a person with limited, specific expertise." As such, new tasks that are provided reduce the professionals previous work capacity, evidently showing deskilling in white-collar industries.Technology has also provided complementary innovations that have largely assisted teachers. Although providing useful tools, technological integration has increased various information sources that have reduced teachers ability to provide critical information. This is further exhibited in the USA, where a national curriculum and distribution of knowledge has standardised a common knowledge base across districts and states, thus resulting in the "deskilling of teachers as professionals, and the production of texts that are characterised by superficial and biased treatment of topics, and include irrelevant materials and unchallenging tasks."
Further deskilling as an outcome of restructuring as a result of teaching innovations shows proletarianization focusing on the intensification of teachers' work as they fulfill a wider range of functions, which is seen as entailing the deskilling of teachers as their range of knowledge and skill is reduced and routinized and a loss of control over their work. To counter the deskilling effects of modern teachers, trade unions in Scandinavia established 'codetermination legislation' in the 1950s with continual amendments that aim to prevent deskilling via automation and technologies disruption in restructuring traditional roles.
Other highly regarded professions such as Airplane Pilots have been directly impacted by automation and the integration of autopilot. This naturally causes deskilling through disengaging pilots from the majority of the flight process, which was previously highly involved. Studies have found that this deskilling effect and the overuse of autopilot creates extreme reliance on the technology and reduces the pilots capabilities when manual control is necessary. Thus, deskilling as well as having quality of work, wage and greater economic impacts also leads to performance degradation, especially within highly qualified professions.
In medicine, a 2025 multicentre observational study in Poland reported that endoscopists' adenoma detection rate during standard colonoscopies decreased from 28.4% to 22.4% after routine exposure to an AI-assisted polyp detection system, suggesting a possible deskilling effect.