Because educational attainment has been advancing only modestly in the US since the turn of the century, we would expect the wage gap to be rising steeply, as it did in the 1980s and 1990s. Instead, it has remained largely unchanged, and it is the unemployment rate among skilled workers that is on the rise, doubling in the US and the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2012.
但是，另一个可能是高技能和非高技能工人薪酬差距缩小体现了机器的日益智能化。在这方面，美国是一个典型。自世纪之交以来，美国的教育入学率只是略有增加，因此，我们应该预期薪酬差距会显著增加，就像20世纪八九十年代那样。相反，薪酬差距基本保持不变，增加的是高技能工人的失业率，2000—2012年，该指标在美国和英国增加了一倍。