“Highest stock market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!” boasted Donald Trump in a tweet in December. The US president is the most prominent advocate of the idea that quantity is almost all that counts when it comes to jobs.“史上最低位的股市！低收入强大重返！”唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)去年12月发推文夸口称之为。主张在低收入方面数量完全就是一切这种观点的人中，这位美国总统是最知名的一位。
But job numbers alone are an increasingly crude barometer of economic health. For workers under pressure from changing technology and globalisation, a new measure is required, based on job quality as much as job quantity.但全然从低收入数据来辨别经济健康状况毕竟更加不准确了。大大变化的技术和全球化使职场中人倍受压力，因此必须创立一个新的指标，同时考量工作岗位的数量和质量。
More subtle politicians have been quick to realise this. Philip Hammond, UK chancellor of the exchequer, referred in his Budget speech in November to a “relentless focus on getting more people into work”. But he added the condition that such work should be “good quality and well paid”.较为灵敏的政客们迅速就意识到了这一点。在去年11月的支出演说中，英国财政大臣菲利普?哈蒙德(Philip Hammond)提及了“要持续注目于让更加多的人有工作”。但他补足了前提条件，即这些工作应当是“质量好、薪酬可观的”。
A few days later, the UK government laid out four “grand challenges” of its industrial strategy, including the promotion of artificial intelligence. “Embedding AI across the UK will create thousands of good quality jobs and drive economic growth,” the strategy document insisted.几天后，英国政府阐释了其产业战略的四项“根本性挑战”，其中还包括推展人工智能。该战略文件否认：“让AI广布仅有英国，将建构许多优质低收入岗位，推展经济快速增长。”Recent history suggests the UK may be indulging in some wishful thinking. Automation is one of the forces identified by David Autor of MIT as squeezing out “good jobs” — the middle-skilled roles to which “ordinary working people” (to use the politicians’ mantra) would aspire.近年来的情况指出，英国政府有可能想要得过分幸福了。麻省理工学院(MIT)的戴维?奥特尔(David Autor)指出自动化是把“好工作”排挤掉的力量之一。
这里说道的“好工作”，是指“普通劳动人民”（这里借出政客们的众说纷纭）所憧憬的中等技能工作岗位。Globalisation is another such pressure. The remainder of the workforce is polarising into high-level managerial and professional posts and low-tier service jobs. Such good jobs as survive demand ever more sophisticated skills.全球化则是另一股力量。职场上剩下的劳动者正在分化为高级管理和专业职位，以及低层次的服务岗位。
这些仅存的好工作拒绝不具备更加高级的技能。For managers who hold on to their positions, this poses new tests. Rick Wartzman, whose book The End of Loyalty is subtitled “The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America”, says the challenge starts with whether to cut jobs, or find ways to reposition staff for the automation revolution.对于挽回职位的经理们来说，这将带给新的考验。《忠心仍然》(The End of Loyalty)的作者瑞克?沃兹曼(Rick Wartzman)说道，挑战始自是缩减工作岗位，还是想要办法重新安排员工的岗位，以适应环境自动化革命。
那本书的副标题是“美国好工作的兴亡”(The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America)。“Management is about making these kinds of decisions,” he told me. For instance, “[how] to put people, or combinations of people and technology, in the right position to maximise effectiveness. Doing an across-the-board cost-cutting exercise isn’t management.”“管理就是要作出这一类的要求，”他告诉他我说道。
例如，“（如何）把人或人和技术的人组放到适合方位，构建效率最大化。实行一套全方位的成本缩减措施算不上管理。”The Brookings Institution recently looked at 14m “good jobs” in the US and found that their “digital score” — based on the knowledge, skills and tools needed to fulfil those roles — had risen from 29 to 50 between 2002 and 2016, out of a possible score of 100 for the most “digitally intense” occupations. In other words, basic digital skills are now a prerequisite for positions — mechanic, nurse, builder — which traditionally open the door to advancement for the two-thirds of Americans who lack a college degree.不久前，布鲁金斯学会(Brookings Institution)在研究美国的1400万份“好工作”后找到，这些好工作的“数字技能分数”——基于遵守这些职务所需的科学知识、技能和工具——从2002年的29分下降到2016年的50分。最高分100分，为“数字密集度”最低的职位。
换言之，不具备基本数字技能已沦为专门从事技工、护士、建筑工等职位的一个先决条件，而传统上，腊这类工作的未获得大学学历的美国人中，有三分之二的人有升迁机会。The same challenge is multiplied by many millions in populous, fast-growing countries such as India. One Indian manufacturing tycoon I met just shrugged when I asked whether he felt any responsibility to the staff he would have to lay off as he installed more sophisticated machines in his factories. His response was just one indication that digitalisation could slam the door in the face of many young Indians, who are counting on basic literacy and numeracy to open up decent production line jobs.在印度等人口众多、发展很快的国家里，某种程度的挑战被缩放了无数倍。我回答一位印度制造业大亨，他在自己工厂里加装更加先进设备机器时，将被迫辞退一些员工，那么他否感觉对这些人负有责任？他的对此只是耸耸肩。这不过是指出数字化可能会折断了许多印度年轻人工作门路的迹象之一，这些人确信着靠基本的读取和计算能力来寻求体面的生产线岗位。
Sometimes, a lack of such skills also blights the future of people forced out of good jobs. In Amy Goldstein’s book Janesville , workers laid off by General Motors flocked to the Wisconsin town’s college to retrain, only for their teachers to discover that some “didn’t even know how to turn [a computer] on”.有时，缺少此类技能也不会烧掉那些毁掉好工作的人们的未来。在埃米?戈尔茨坦(Amy Goldstein)的著作《珍斯维尔》(Janesville)中，被通用汽车公司(General Motors)辞退的员工四散至这个威斯康星州城镇的大学展开再行培训，结果他们的老师却找到有些人“甚至会开机（电脑）”。One responsibility of future managers is to ensure that this ground-level digital education is made available. “The next phase of the digital skills push needs to add a new, less-glamorous focus on IT basics such as Microsoft Office and basic customer relationship management (CRM) software to the cooler agenda of scaling up the code schools,” Brookings fellow Mark Muro wrote in a blogpost about the think-tank’s report.未来管理者的职责之一是保证员工有机会取得这种基础数字教育。
“推展数字技能的下一阶段，必须在减少编程学校的矮小上议程之外，再加一个新的、不那么迷人的关注点：微软公司Office等IT基础知识和基本的客户关系管理(CRM)软件，”布鲁金斯学会研究员马克?穆罗(Mark Muro)在一篇关于该智库报告的博文中写到。The model, says Wartzman, needs to change to one in which managers offer staff opportunities for lifelong learning. Ideally, this should happen on the job, rather than after redundancy, when the efficacy of retraining may be undermined by the general lack of opportunities, as happened to Janesville’s unemployed car workers in the depths of the 2008-09 recession.沃兹曼说道，当前模式必须改变为管理者为员工获取终生自学机会的模式。在理想情况下，这应当再次发生在工作中，而不是裁员之后——那种时候机会的广泛缺少可能会巩固再行培训的效果，在2008年至2009年经济相当严重衰落时期，珍斯维尔失业汽车工人就面对这种情形。
The last resort may be to find ways to change the status of what used to be considered poor jobs. In Taiwan, the government successfully improved urban cleanliness by upgrading the “bad job” of street cleaning. It now comes with a salary close to the national average and a decent pension. Public competitions pit “clean teams” from different districts against each other.最后一招是想要办法转变那些历年来被指出很差的工作的地位。在台湾，当局通过提升洗手街道这个“怕工作”的待遇，顺利地让城市显得更加整洁。现在，街道环卫工人的工资已相似台湾的平均水平，并能获得不俗的养老金。
公共竞赛让有所不同地区的“洗手团队”彼此进行竞争。It is an idiosyncratic example, but it underlines a point that Trump may want to consider. Creating more jobs is a fine goal; creating better jobs is even finer.这个例子有些类似，但它突显了一个道理，或许特朗普不愿花心思想一想。建构更好的工作岗位是一个幸福的目标；而更加有一点执着的是建构优良的工作岗位。
本文来源：半岛平台-www.mysuggester.com
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