Worker Anxiety Threatens Stability Business, Education Leaders Call For Steps To Head Off Trouble

Prominent business and education leaders warn that American society will grow more divided without renewed private and public efforts to give workers skills and training needed in a rapidly changing economy.

Frank P. Doyle, retired General Electric executive vice president, told reporters that a report on the subject released Thursday by the private Committee for Economic Development contains a warning for “an increasingly skill-oriented world.”

“There is a real danger that as training and investment continue to flow principally to the already educated, the already trained, (that) this in itself can be destabilizing and will promote even greater inequality,” said Doyle, who chaired the panel that drafted the report.

The report, “American Workers and Economic Change,” said the new economy “is built on knowledge and skills. The loss to society and its economy from underdeveloped human capital has always been high but is now rising dramatically.”

It noted that the new economy generally bodes well for workers with education beyond high school, but not for the less skilled.

The report calls for public and private policies to produce both stronger economic growth and more widely shared economic opportunity. It recommends measures to “raise and broaden investment in human capital, ease adjustment to job dislocation and redesign economic security.”