Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist with the Urban Institute, predicts workers will ''increasingly trade off higher wages for various kinds of non-wage benefits,'' such as better working conditions, job training and mobility, more flexible hours and locations and day care facilities. As the baby-boom generation matures, the labor force will be older. Also, two-thirds of the new workers in this decade will be women. Retooling the American labor force is necessary not only to ensure that workers have the technical skills to keep up with new developments, but also to enable them to actually set the pace of these developments in the world market. If in the 1980s, these nations achieve a domination of these industries, as they have in the past in basic metals, consumer electronics and automobiles, the U.S. will face profoundly serious economic problems and choices in the 1990s,'' Choate says.
New skills are needed at all levels, economists warn.
At the high end of the scale, there are shortages of scientists, engineers and other highly educated and skilled workers. In the middle are millions of workers who will need retraining as their current jobs disappear or change. And at the bottom are the millions of adults who are functionally illiterate. Yet, many say, the public and private sectors are not geared up to turn an obsolete workforce into a workable one. The Pennsylvania program that is teaching former steelworker Pieczynski to become a computer technician appears more an exception than the norm.