This phenomenon has been referred to as job polarization.45 Job polarization arises from the development of information and communication technologies and their ability to replace tasks formerly performed by human labour. The key issue is that all tasks are not equally prone to computerization.
Computers have increasingly displaced workers in ‘routine’ tasks that are characteristic of many middle-skilled activities, such as clerical and administrative work, and repetitive production tasks. But as David Autor, one of the leading scholars in this field, importantly points out, the fact that a task cannot be computerized does not imply that computerization has no effect on that task.