The rise of the information society has been accompanied by an enduring and high level of unemployment. This paper aims to analyse the relationship between information technology and employment as a 'systemic property' of societies, in terms of 'per capita labour demand'. Combining studies at various levels of aggregation, the paper concludes that, in the long run, technological development results in declining levels of employment. In a next step, differences in the employment structures of various developed countries are analysed. This produces an idea of the different possible futures of work in the information society.
['Peter van den Besselaar']
The future of employment in the information society: a comparative, longitudinal and multi-level study