[Economist] 货车里的大象（二）

The elephant in the truck

货车里的大象

---

**Whosoever hath not **
**凡没有的 **

The rewards of retraining are highest for computing skills, but there is no natural pathway from trucker to coder. And even if there were, many of those already in the workforce lack both the confidence and the capability to make the switch. In its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, the OECD presents a bleak picture of skills levels in 33 member countries (see chart). One in five adults, on average, has poor reading and numeracy skills. One in four has little or no experience of computers. On a measure of problem-solving ability using technology, most adults are at or below the lowest level of proficiency.
接受再培训后回报最高的工作是计算机技能，但在火车司机和程序员之间并不存在自然的转换。并且即使存在这种捷径，那些许多已经工作的人也缺乏进行这种转换的信心和能力。在为 International Assessment of Adult Competencies 提供的方案中，OECD 展示了 33 个成员国劳动力技能水平的黯淡现状。平均起来大约五分之一的成人在阅读和计算能力上存在缺陷。四分之一的只有一点或者完全没有计算机技能。在一项实用科技来解决问题的评测中，大部分成年人的能力仅仅是相当于甚至会低于熟练水平。

Moreover, learning is most effective when people are able to practise their new skills. Yet many jobs, including lorry-driving, afford little such opportunity, and some of them are being deskilled further. Research by Tom Higgins of Cardiff University suggests that the numeracy requirements for retail assistants and care-home workers in Britain went down between 1997 and 2012. The head of one of the world’s biggest banks worries that a back office operation in India has disaggregated its work into separate tasks so effectively that employees are no longer able to understand the processes as a whole, let alone make useful suggestions for improving them.
此外，当人们能够去实践新学到的技能的时候学习效率才是最高的。然而许多工作，诸如卡车司机，几乎不会提供这样的学习机会，有些工作甚至对技能的要求在变低。Cardiff University 的 Tom Higgins 的研究指出，在 1997 到 2012 年间，英国的销售助理和护理中心员工对于计算能力的要求在下降。某世界最大银行的领导人担心在印度负责后勤的部门为了工作效率将它们的工作拆分使得员工不在理解整个工作流程，更不用说提供一些有用的建议来增进效率。

So the truckers’ dilemma will be very hard to solve. “It’s difficult when you don’t have a good answer even in an ideal world,” says Jesper Roine, an economist who sat on a Swedish commission to examine the future of work. But as a thought experiment it highlights some of the problems involved in upgrading the stock of low-skilled and mid-skilled workers. Any decent answer will need a co-ordinated effort to bring together individuals, employers and providers of education. That suggests a role for two entities in particular.
所以火车司机的困境将很难解决。受瑞典所托研究未来工作的一位经济学家 Jesper Roine 指出：“这非常困难即使是在理想世界中也不存在答案。”不过最为思想实验，它指出了在为低水平和中等水平工人提升技能时可能遇到的问题。任何合理的答案都需要将个人、雇主和培训提供者结合起来。这就特别指出了两个实体。