But we believe that a positive approach is required, based on the creation of jobs in areas of need and new opportunity, rather than concentrating only on unemployment remedies.
Technological innovation occurs continually and is dynamic part of the wealth-creating process.
Applied to operating methods, new technology inevitably and drastically reduces the jobs needed to provide existing goods and services. The potential expansion of sales of such products will not in general be sufficient to restore the lost jobs, nor should such jobs be artificially retained. However, given sufficient imagination, energy and willingness to change, new technology can lead to the creation of totally new goods and services, many of them unknown and even unknowable in the past. At the same time there is scope for many new products and services which are initially labour-intensive. Unemployment in the developed countries is variously attributed to new technology, transfer of production to less developed countries, excessive labour cost and disincentive of social welfare systems, insufficient flexibility and retraining, resistance to change and lack of innovation.