The Future Is Blue Collar ; White-Collar Workers Are Standing by Helplessly As Technology, Cheap Labour and the Recession Destroy Their Jobs. It's Plumbers Who Now Have Prospects, Says Philip Delves Broughton

Summary

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HELPLESS is a word you hear a lot these days, especially from the white-collar unemployed. Their skills are not valued any more. The job cuts in financial services and beyond are looking increasingly permanent rather than part of the natural cycle of economic contraction and expansion.

Services which once required educated people sitting in offices in central London, from accounting to architecture to legal contracts, can now be done at one-tenth the cost on the other side of the world. Recent university graduates, who were told at every step of their life that success required a bachelor's degree, are finding they have nothing but a certificate and debt to show for it.

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Extract

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The Future Is Blue Collar ; White-Collar Workers Are Standing by Helplessly As Technology, Cheap Labour and the Recession Destroy Their Jobs. It's Plumbers Who Now Have Prospects, Says Philip Delves Broughton

Technology, cheap foreign labour and the economic collapse are rendering a highly educated class of professional worker helpless.

It is the same in the United States, where millions of white- collar jobs have been slashed recently which may never come back. And as the months rol...

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