Why Some IT Jobs Stay: The Rise of Job Training in Information Technology

mode of development, in which “the source of productivity lies in the technology of knowledge generation, information processing, and symbol communication” (17). Castells is not alone in this assessment, as a number of other scholars within urban and economic development have identified knowledge and information manipulation as a crucial component of the current economy. While these changes were the basis of much of the economic boom in the United States in the 1990s, they also bring the dual threats of the dispersal and polarization of the workforce. For example, a number of commentators see globalization and the rapid diffusion of information technologies as foreshadowing the relocation of all types of jobs to lower cost locations. At times, the level of the rhetoric reaches doomsday proportions (at least from the perspective of U.S. cities). There is mention of a “placeless society” in a “spaceless world.” However, as this paper demonstrates, the dynamic of job growth, particularly within information technology (IT) occupations, is much more complicated than simple cost-minimization. Although information technologies have allowed some regions such as Banga-