As digital continues to dominate, South Africa’s ability to secure economic access for all its people—giving its workforce the skills to participate in the digital economy and earn—will determine its future trajectory. In this report, Accenture Research identifies: the new skills needed to unlock advantages in the digital economy; and the actions needed by South African leaders across business, government and industry to shape and prepare the workforce to ‘run with the machine’.

This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals. Paul Taylor, executive vice president, special projects of the Pew Research Center, provided editorial guidance for the entire report and wrote the Overview. Carroll Doherty, director of political research, provided editorial guidance for Chapters 1 and 2. Rich Morin, senior editor, wrote Chapters 1 and 2, with support from the political staff. Kim Parker, director of social trends research, oversaw the development of the survey questionnaire, co-wrote the overview and wrote Chapter 3. Greg Smith from the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project provided data analysis, editorial guidance and number checking for the section dealing with trends in religious affiliation. Andrew Kohut, founding director of the Pew Research Center; Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project; Alan Cooperman, director of religion research; and Scott Keeter, director of survey research, provided editorial input for their areas of expertise. Several researchers contributed to data analysis, chart production, writing and number-checking.

Many industrial countries are replacing conventional power plants with renewable energy sources. Green energy policies might affect employment in different ways. A policy shift toward a low-carbon green economy may create new and additional “green jobs” in renewable energy sources and energy-efficiency technologies. However, this may potentially come with the crowding out of employment in other sectors. In addition, energy prices may increase owing to feed-in tariffs subsidizing renewables. The resulting burden may in turn stifle labor demand in industrial sectors and reduce the purchasing power of private households.

People1st is responsible for the Hospitality, Leisure, Travel & Tourism sector. This covers almost 2 million people (1,887,800) working across 14 main industries. Many of these industries overlap and certain distinct areas of work fall more broadly within other industries. The events industry, for example, is often found within hotels (such as a wedding planner employed in a hotel) or holiday parks (where evening entertainment is commonly provided). In addition, many of the core occupations in the hospitality, leisure, travel & tourism sector are common to all the main industries. For example, whilst the primary aim of visitor attractions such as Alton Towers is to offer theme park attractions to visitors, they also have places to eat and drink meaning that catering staff are important to this industry.

This report provides information on the material wellbeing of New Zealanders as indicated by their household incomes from all sources over the period 1982 to 2016. It updates the last report published in 2016 which covered 1982 to 2015. It is one of a suite of three reports that provide information on the material wellbeing of New Zealanders. The suite includes: the Household Incomes Report; the companion report that uses non-income measures (NIMs) to measure and track material wellbeing; and an Overview report which provides a 40-page summary and synthesis of the findings in the two longer reports.

The proportion of national income paid to Australian workers has been eroding for the last 40 years: from over 58 per cent labour share of GDP in the mid-1970s, falling to a record post-war low of just 47 per cent in 2017 (Stanford 2018a). Ninety per cent of what labour has lost has been reflected in an increase in the corporate profit share. This observed experience is unravelling traditional expectations that a rising GDP inevitably increases labour incomes, and that labour incomes will automatically rise in step with real labour productivity. A key reason why growth, productivity and wages have been de-linked is the weakening of the redistributive institutions which Australia built during the long post-war expansion – when the country became known as the ‘land of a fair go.’ One of the most important dimensions of this institutional decline has been the dramatic retrenchment in the collective bargaining regime. Introduced in the 1990s as the main pay-setting mechanism for employees, the enterprise bargaining system is now on the brink of collapse. There are far fewer enterprise agreements (EAs), an upturn in employer-led EA terminations, and around 660,000 less workers covered by current EAs at June 2018 than at end-2013. The flip side of this coin has been a noted increase in the proportion of Australian workers whose pay and conditions are set according to the minimum standards of Modern Awards. This report provides a detailed description of the erosion of enterprise bargaining: including its composition and dynamics, and its causes and consequences. It focuses attention on the private sector, where two-thirds of all EA-covered employees worked in 2018 – and where coverage decline has been dramatic. In the private sector the number of current EAs has almost halved, and the number of employees covered has dropped by 34 per cent since end-2013 (peak year), a decline of 662,461 employees. Only 12 per cent of Australians employed in the private sector are now covered by current EAs. Without urgent action to reverse the underlying factors driving down EA coverage, and rebuild a more viable and effective collective bargaining system, coverage could fall to below 2 per cent of private sector workers by 2030.

Globalisation is under attack these days from all quarters. It has of course long faced criticism from the left for being divisive and undemocratic. That’s not new. But, remarkably and in an act of brazen but effective political theft, that core critique – which in effect alleged that the purported universal benefits of globalisation had not ‘trickled down’ inclusively enough and that the process was instead fostering growing and increasingly outrageous inequalities – has been purloined over the course of the past couple of years by the populist right. As we know and now hear almost every day, Donald Trump and his followers look forward to initiating a process of what is being called ‘de-globalisation’ whereby companies are hauled back to their national bases, rust-belts are made good again and trade wars seen as valid tools of national diplomacy.

The focus of this project is on the assessment of transferable skills, and specifically resilience. Resilience has been defined as “the capacity of the person, family, or community to prevent, minimize, overcome, or thrive in spite of negative or challenging circumstances” (Wagnild & Young, 1993). In this report, Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) investigates the most appropriate measures to assess resilience as a learning outcome of Ontario’s postsecondary education (PSE) system. The long-term aim is to support the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) in its efforts to determine the role of PSE in enhancing resilience as a transferable skill.