High-Tech Promise Held Overstated: Not Seen as Curing All Economic...
The high-tech industry, the supposed savior of sagging economies everywhere, is seriously overrated as an answer to unemployment and recession, industry observers report.</br></br>A forest of myths obscures some unpleasant realities: high tech creates few jobs, accounting for only about 8 percent of total U.S. employment; the jobs it creates are primarily middle-level ones, rather than either very highly skilled or assembly-line positions; it is not, in many cases, a ÛÏcleanÛ industry, and it is dominated by a few giant corporations.</br></br>Local jurisdictions, trade groups and federal agencies monitoring the industry have their own, frequently widely varying definitions of a high-tech company. As a result, there is widespread disagreement on how much employment should be credited to these firms.</br></br>The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics and many experts, such as Robert Z. Lawrence, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, use narrower definitions than those of most local jurisdictions and boards of trade, which often count firms with slight connections to high tech.</br></br>Montgomery County, for example, includes a contact lens manufacturer in its high-tech biological and medical firms, and a general management consulting company among its high-tech computer firms, according to a Greater Washington Research Center report.