Reports on changes that will affect the labor force and the workplace. Trends include (1) the crumbling skill base, (2) the shifting skill focus, (3) the shift from physical to mental labor, (4) technology management, and (5) avoidance of obsolescence. (CH)

This description of the Computer-Managed and Aided Instruction (CMAI) Project includes a summary of a December 1989 CMAI planning meeting, the text of a paper presented at the meeting, and descriptions of each of the five phases of the project. The paper, "Programming the Future," by Gerald C. Angove and Scott Smith, discusses: (1) the…

During the next two decades, vocational education will face a major challenge to keep up to date with technology. National crises usually lead to new technologies. The United States today faces major problems in the areas of energy, productivity, and foreign trade. Solutions to these problems will generate new knowledge and technology that will…

This paper addresses the extent to which retraining and training programs are available for employed and unemployed adults. First, demographic and economic shifts and projections into the next century are discussed as the context for needed training. Second, the promise and positive impacts of new technologies in office and business settings are…

Impacts from the major high technological changes now underway cut across all industrial sectors and most occupational clusters. Technological innovation can increase or decrease the total number of types of jobs. Decline in employment may be offset, however, by new applications and capabilities of goods and services or by employment shifts. While…

Analysis of the costs of employing older workers indicates that some types of employment costs do vary by age and that overall compensation costs increase with age, largely because of increasing employee benefit costs. There is, however, no statistical evidence that direct salary costs increase by age on an economy-wide basis. The belief that…