White Paper

Governors and state legislators have a unique opportunity to help prepare their constituents for the many ways that work is changing. Outsourcing, global competition, and rapid advances in technology are transforming jobs and industries, leading to economic disruption as old products, jobs, and industries are replaced by new ideas and companies. While these changes have brought economic benefits, they have also contributed to stagnant wages, declining benefits, weakening workplace protections, and, in some cases, job loss. Policymakers, employers, education and training institutions, and other critical stakeholders must work together to create an economy that helps workers take advantage of new and changing jobs, while providing the necessary supports that workers will need to weather the disruptions from changes in technology, trade, and organizational structure. As governors and state legislators explore measures responsive to the changing nature of work, the Aspen Institute Future of Work Initiative State Policy Agenda highlights a set of policy options that would help address this challenge. These proposals focus on three approaches: modernizing worker benefits and protections, building a skilled and resilient workforce, and aligning and prioritizing future of work policy.

The forces of innovation and global competition – combined with an increasing quest for short-run profits at the expense of long-run value – are undermining the partnership between business and workers, and contributing to stagnating wages, economic insecurity, and declining workforce investments. We need a new model of capitalism that offers novel ways to meet these challenges. Our agenda of new ideas has three overarching goals: Workers should benefit from the economic growth their productive capacities help create. That means rising wages and a greater stake in the businesses where they work. All workers should have access to critical safety net benefits and protections, no matter their employment classification. Workers need more skills, more flexibility, more say, and more opportunities to fulfill their potential and keep pace with the future of work. Our policy agenda attempts to accomplish these goals by encouraging businesses to reward and invest in their workforce, using three leverage points – business incentives, public information, and corporate governance. Because we recognize not all businesses will respond to these leverage points, we also include policies that empower workers to pursue economic opportunity, security, and training outside of the employment relationship.

This document, “The Promise of Opportunity and the Future of Work,” describes how technology and global competition have modernized the American economy in many positive ways, but that some changes have also made it harder for Americans to find jobs with the wages, benefits, and skills training to get ahead. The associated policy agenda, “A Policy Agenda to Restore the Promise of Work,” offers a set of ideas to meet the challenge. It recognizes that policymakers have often responded to the aforementioned trends with regulations meant to protect employees, but this approach can drive up costs and encourage businesses to rely more heavily on contract and contingent work, which in turn provides even less security to workers. This agenda provides an alternate approach, one that restores the promise of work with - out stifling innovation. It is a work in progress, and neither one of us endorses every single idea. We offer these ideas in order to start a conversation across sectors and parties about how we can come together to address these common challenges.

The Advisory Panel on Labour Market Information (LMI) is an independent group established by the Forum of Labour Market Ministers (FLMM) to provide advice on how best to improve Canada’s LMI system to make Canadian labour markets function better. And while we knew that, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), our LMI system is one of the best in the world, we eagerly took up our task knowing that we can always do better. As we carried out our consultations, the nature of the challenges facing Canadian labour markets dramatically changed from labour shortages to rising unemployment across the country. But this did not fundamentally alter our task. A good LMI system will help to improve the matching of people and jobs both in times of labour shortages and high unemployment. And a good LMI system is always necessary to make sure that the right policy decisions are made to improve the economy’s performance and lower unemployment.

As part of its strategy of balance between training and employment, the metropolis Employment Council (EMC) has undertaken to perform diagnostics on the needs labor and the supply of training for some sectors of importance of the census metropolitan area (CMA) of Montreal. This study, which joined TechnoMontréal TECHNOCompétences and aims to establish a diagnosis for 18 key occupations in information technology and communications (ICT) in eight sectors of economic activity. [googletranslate_en]

In recent years, technology and entrepreneurship have been promoted as the future of our economy. They are expected to create the prosperity and jobs we need to keep Toronto a vibrant world-class city. TechToronto believes this to be true, but we also believe that the average Torontonian doesn’t appreciate the extent to which technology has already transformed our economy. The Internet, mobile technologies, wearables, big data and machine learning have created thousands of new companies and jobs in Toronto. We undertook this study to demonstrate the impact of technology on the Toronto economy and suggest ways to help the technology ecosystem to prosper and grow. This study defines the Toronto tech ecosystem and measures the ecosystem’s resilience, robustness and impact on the economy. The report consists of two sections. The first two sections provide a quantitative overview of both the Toronto economy at large and the growing tech ecosystem within it. The third section outlines our policy recommendations.

In recent years, several studies have been conducted and highlighted the critical shortage of qualified professionals to fill occupations in ICT in the financial sector. More specifically, three professions are identified as most critical, either 1) scientific data, 2) analysis in business intelligence and 3) data architecture. The present study aimed to: 1) create a portrait of trends and challenges specific to these three roles, 2) identify the needs of workforce acquisition, training and retention, and 3) recommend ways Action to promote the hiring and continued employment of these specialists, as well as adjustments to the existing training for these three professions so that the industry has sufficient qualified resources for continued growth. [googletranslate_en]

This independent review considers the implications of new forms of work on worker rights and responsibilities, as well as on employer freedoms and obligations. It sets out 7 principles to address the challenges facing the UK labour market.

The effect which occupational regulation can have on skill levels, however, is not necessarily consistent. Forth et al. (2011) report it is heavily contingent on the particular occupation, the type of occupational regulation established and its subsequent design, implementation and governance. Whilst there is evidence of the positive effects of introducing occupational regulation (which increase in likelihood the stricter the form of regulation applied) there is little information on schema design or the motivations for their introduction or amendment. This report addresses some of these gaps and, consequently, the aims of the research were to: Identify the design, implementation and administration/governance factors associated with occupational regulation schemes. Use employer and stakeholder perceptions and existing evidence to explore the impact of occupational regulation. Use employer and stakeholder perceptions and existing evidence to explore the impact of unintended consequences. Examine key stakeholder views of the advantages and disadvantages of occupational regulation and critical success factors. Identify best practice in occupational regulation.