What explains the slowing growth of abstract task-intensive employment? One interpretation is that automation, information technology, and technological progress in general are encroaching upward in the task domain and beginning to substitute strongly for the work done by professional, technical, and managerial occupations. While one should not dismiss this possibility out of hand, it doesn’t fit well with the pattern of computer and software investment. If information technology is increasingly replacing workers high in the skill distribution, one would expect a surge of corporate investment in computer hardware and software.