Unskilled work becomes harder to find in Britain

Researchers say unskilled work has become much harder to find in recent years.

Only 27% of posts needed no qualifications in 2001, down from 38% in 1986.

Nearly three-quarters of jobs involve using computers, up from 53% only a decade ago, according to a team of economists.

The report by the ESRC Research Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, based at Oxford and Warwick Universities, found that the number of jobs for which computer literacy is essential jumped from 31% to 40% between 1997 and 2001.

The proportion of employees who said they had plenty of discretion as to how they did their jobs fell from 52% in 1986 to 39% in 2001. That is fuelling job dissatisfaction, say the researchers.

Professor Francis Green of Kent University, who led the team, said: "The good news is that increasing job skills provide the basis for improved economic prosperity, and that computer skills are growing in all sectors of the economy.

"But the downside is that many people are finding they are being given less discretion and choice in their daily tasks and this makes them less satisfied with their jobs."

There are broadly enough highly-qualified people to go around, the research shows.

However, there are more intermediate and low-skilled people than there are jobs requiring these levels of qualification, although employers still prefer to hire them over workers with no skills at all.

The research was based on interviews with 4,500 people in Britain aged 20 to 60.