How Many Workers Are Knowledge Workers?

The change in the American workforce has been evolving slowly over the past century. Over this time, the dominant jobs have shifted from materials extraction and processing to information processing. The trend was constant and consistent over the century for the primary and tertiary sectors. The secondary sector actually peaked at 50% in 1960 and then trended back down to end the century where it started. The following chart is from PBS The First Measured Century (a fun book and website).

At first glance, these statistics would seem to imply that knowledge workers make up 58% of the total workforce. It is true that workers in the tertiary sector deal primarily with knowledge. But these labels do not capture the breadth of the trend. So please do not look at these statistics, decide that your workers do not fit the definition of knowledge workers, and think that you can stop reading this book. In our experience, it is not that simple. The use of computers in the workplace is turning almost every worker into a knowledge worker. Work of all kinds is becoming more data driven. And business challenges require more on-the-job thinking and learning.

The classic example of how factory workers can become knowledge workers has for many years been Toyota. Toyota taught the business world many lessons on how to empower workers to adapt the way they work every day. One of our favorite stories was the employees at a Toyota plant who were concerned with the potential for error in an installation process that had 12 possible configurations for sun visors and nine configurations for seat belts. Picking the right parts when it came time to install them was a distraction. So the team went down the street to Wal-Mart and bought plastic totes that could be pre-packed with the right combination of parts. Would you call these workers knowledge workers? We would. Of course, Toyota is also an example of what happens when the empowerment and communication stops before it gets to the top of the company. That’s a topic for another day.

For now, we encourage you to look at all your workers as knowledge workers and how that changes your job as a manager. More coming on this thought…

Adapted from Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st Century Organization by Mary Adams and Michael Oleksak.