“The COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and related global recession of 2020 have created a highly uncertain outlook for the labour market … millions of workers have experienced changes which have profoundly transformed their lives within and beyond work, their well-being and their productivity,” said the World Economic Forum (WEF) in The Future of Jobs Report 2020, published in October, 2020. “Comparing the impact of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 on individuals with lower education levels to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the impact today is far more significant and more likely to deepen existing inequalities.”
The Economist was considerably more optimistic in a special report on The Future of Work in its April 10 issue, which included several articles on the subject. “A jobs rebound, shifting politics and technological change could bring a golden age for labour in rich countries,” said the overview article. “It might seem premature to predict a wonderful world of work only a year on from a labour-market catastrophe. But America is showing how rapidly jobs can come back as the virus recedes. In the spring of 2020 the country’s unemployment rate was nearly 15%. Now it is already just 6% after a year containing five of the ten best months for hiring in history.”
The key reason for The Economist’s optimistic outlook is that as labor markets recovers, two deeper shifts are unfolding: a political environment which is becoming friendlier to workers than it’s been in decades; and an accelerated digital economy which promises to bring about faster productivity growth. Let me briefly summarize each of these two shifts.
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