Professor Dr. Karl-Heinz Schmidt teaches at Paderborn University, West Germany, and has recently spent a year as a visiting research scholar at Nagoya University, Japan. The paper considers the problem of whether new technologies have positive or negative net effects on the level and structure of employment. It is found that the displacement of labour seems to be the overwhelming effect on employment in West European countries compared with Japan, where the employment creating effects of new technologies are emphasised. A number of arguments for an optimistic view concerning employment in small and medium sized enterprises are found.
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