The Changing Nature of Knowledge Workers in the New Industrial Country: an Industry - Level Analysis

Academia and industry agree on the importance of knowledge worker workers in emerging economy or new industrial country for economic growth. Understanding the changing nature of knowledge workers in an industry-level analysis is helpful to formulate industry policy. This study aims to investigate the changing of knowledge workers in Taiwan 20 manufacturing industries during 1988-2005. Empirical results are shown as follows. First, there is a trend shift from non-knowledge workers to knowledge workers in all manufacturing industry. Second, based on the shift-share analysis, the withinindustry effect on increasing knowledge workers is more than the betweenindustry effect, especially in electric & electronic machinery industry. Finally, both technological progress and international trade factors positively affect increasing knowledge workers, and the effect of the former is more than that of the later, based on regression analysis of fixed effect model.