The accelerating pace of technological and social change has resulted in a large number of jobs, skills and professions becoming either obsolete or dramatically reduced in numbers and importance. This pace of job obsolescence is likely to accelerate rapidly in the 1990s when the full effects of the second industrial revolution, based on the dramatic advances in electronics and computing, are implemented throughout industry and commerce. The resulting change will mean an unprecedented need for flexibility and retraining; but even then large sections of the potential working population are likely to remain marooned, and surplus to the requirements of the job market.