Every month, more than one million job seekers enter India’s labour market. However, despite being an investors’ darling, India’s employment generation track record has been disappointing. In the medium term, the revolt against globalisation threatens the access to Western export markets. Converging manufacturing costs work to discourage offshoring, while ever faster consumer product markets encourage the reshoring of production closer to the home market. The global window for export- and manufacturing- led development is, hence closing. Where will the jobs of tomorrow be created? Can India leapfrog into a service-led economy? Will the green economy keep its promise to create green jobs? Can the blue economy boost employment in coastal areas? How can the millions toiling in the care economy be better remunerated? Creating a human economy is more than a technical task. To move up the global value chain, major investment into human capital is needed. To generate the necessary resources for the provision of full capabilities, a social democratic compromise is needed which lays the social foundation for solidarity between all members of society

Over the past 10 years, the World Economic Forum has brought together a community of influential leaders committed to addressing the global gender gap with a focus on the economic aspects of gender parity. We have benchmarked national, regional and industry gender gaps and gathered best practices adopted by leading companies in all regions of the world. To accelerate the closing of the global gender gap in employment, companies and governments can benefit from a platform to learn from each other’s experience and be inspired by possibilities for further action. To that end, the World Economic Forum has been fostering communities through which leaders can exchange knowledge, discuss adapting models to local circumstances and celebrate impact. The principles showcased in this toolkit highlight several approaches taken to closing gender gaps in companies across the globe. Each of these practices has a potentially transformative role but is most effective within a consistent company-wide strategy, resting on a strong foundation of labour standards, including health and safety. For such an approach to work, leaders must commit for the long-term and manage some of the short-term barriers and trade-offs. There is an urgent need to accelerate progress towards gender parity, particularly as labour markets face both technological disruption and talent shortages. We hope that the principles for action outlined herein will serve to deepen existing commitments, inspire fresh, impact-focused initiatives to promote gender parity, and further work with geographical and sectoral focus.

Human skills—like leadership, communication, and problem solving—are among the most in-demand skills in the labor market. Human skills are applied differently across career fields. To be effective, liberal arts grads must adapt their skills to the job at hand. Liberal art grads should add technical skills. There is considerable demand for workers who complement their human skills with basic technical skills like data analysis and digital fluency. Human+ skills are at work in a variety of fields. Human skills help liberal arts grads thrive in many career areas, including marketing, public relations, technology, and sales.

Do robots raise or lower economic well-being? On the one hand, they raise output and bring more goods and services into reach. On the other hand, they eliminate jobs, shift investments away from machines that complement labor, lower wages, and immiserize workers who cannot compete. The net effect of these offsetting forces is unclear. This paper seeks to clarify how economic outcomes, positive or negative, depend both on specific parameters of the economy and public policy. We find that a rise in robotic productivity is more likely to lower the welfare of young workers and future generations when the saving rate is low, automatable and non-automatable goods are more substitutable in consumption, and when traditional capital is a more important complement to labor. In some parameterizations the relationship of utility to robotic productivity follows a “noisy U” as large innovations are long-run welfare improving even though small innovations are immiserizing. Policies that redistribute income across generations can ensure that a rise in robotic productivity benefits all generations.

Are smarter machines our children's friends? Or can they bring about a transfer from our relatively unskilled children to ourselves that leaves our children and, indeed, all our descendants - worse off?

We welcome the Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into the STEM skills gap. Individuals with STEM skills are major contributors to the prosperity of the UK and the provision of these skills leads to significant economic growth, improvements in quality of life and greater innovation. A training in STEM at a Russell Group university endows graduates and postgraduates with the skills needed to become the high-quality labour force and leaders required for the future development of the UK’s economy and society. Our universities train the vast majority of the UK’s doctors and dentists and a disproportionately high number of scientists, mathematicians and engineers. They invest significant resource in ensuring students on STEM courses are prepared for the workplace and many design their courses with input from business – helping to ensure the UK has the talent pool to meet the future needs of employers. Despite these efforts, the UK’s pipeline of STEM graduates is at risk as a result of continued underfunding from government. STEM subjects are inherently expensive to deliver and without appropriate funding they could become financially unsustainable – especially if the government wishes to increase the number of students studying these subjects. In order to underpin future growth and close the STEM skills gap, increased funding per student is required for universities teaching STEM subjects.

Individuals with STEM skills are major contributors to the prosperity of the UK and the provision of these skills leads to significant economic growth, improvements in quality of life and greater innovation. A training in STEM at a Russell Group university endows graduates and postgraduates with the skills needed to become the high-quality labour force and leaders required for the future development of the UK’s economy and society.

This report was commissioned by Unions21 to better understand the changing landscape of the future UK labour market. Its purpose is to a) identify industries with high projected employment growth and b) analyse worker characteristics in these industries, in order to inform subsequent market research for Unions21 regarding workers’ views towards trade unions and collective bargaining. The report draws on already available forecasting data on the UK labour market, primarily the most recent Working Futures report from 2016 by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), which forecasts employment trends in the UK in the decade leading up to 2024.

Technology has constantly and consistently changed how people work and how economies and societies are organized. In the past, that global system has been somewhat disconnected, with countries working and growing independently. Abundant resources seemingly without limitation fed growth, education was limited to a few elites, and new industries represented new and more jobs for many. Globalization and technological advents enabled labor markets in developing countries to gain a slice of the global pie. This is a healthy trend in the world economy, with more people competing in and contributing to global output, resulting in increased economic efficiency. However, there are threats to the opportunities that today's technologies represent for tomorrow. In the twenty-first century, the technologies at the center of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution"---robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and others---are defining the future of work and our society into a drastically different system than ever before. While past industrial revolutions created and destroyed jobs, they eventually resulted in overall positive net job effects, including improving working conditions, efficiency, and enabling diverse people to enter global supply chains. Well documented labor and human rights abuses throughout past industrial revolutions convinced governments and civil society to protect workers. The new Fourth Industrial Revolution will be similar in that if it is not well managed, it could lead to job loss and human rights abuses. But if confronted now through economic modernization and forward thinking, the fourth industrial revolution could power a sustainable future where emerging markets mature, and developed economies do not face similar shocks to the Great Depression and Great Recession.