Jobactive is the Australian Government's generalist employment service and the largest program through which employment services are delivered to Australians. Recognising that employment services need to adapt and change with the labour market, the government undertook a consultation on delivering better targeted and more tailored services that benefit users. This discussion paper sets out key issues to be considered in the design of a future employment services model. The Employment Services Expert Advisory Panel, national and international research, and user-centred design with users, including job seekers, employers and employment services providers, have also informed this document. The paper also provides details on how to provide comments about the issues raised., Edited excerpts from publication., The paper covers the following themes: the goals for future employment services; helping disadvantaged Australians into work; empowering job seekers and employers through improved online services; better meeting the needs of employers; assessing job seekers to tailor support to their needs; incentives for job seekers to find work; targeted regional and local approaches; a service culture built on competition and policy; and transitioning to a future employment services model. Appendices are as follows: A: Short history of employment services; B: A guide to jobactive; C: Summary of complementary programs; D: Common misconceptions of employment services; E: jobactive caseload data; F: Performance of jobactive; G: Labour market data and information; H: International employment services.

This paper studies changes in computer use and job quality in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015. We document that while the proportion of workers using computers has increased from 40 per cent to more than 60 per cent over twenty years, there remain significant differences between countries even within the same occupations. Several countries have seen a significant increase in computer use even in low-skilled occupations generally assumed to be less affected by technology. Overall, the great increase in computer use between 1995 and 2015 has coincided with a period of modest deterioration of job quality in the EU-15 as whole, as discretion declined for most occupational and educational groups while intensity increased slightly for most of them. Our [ordinary least squares OLS results that exploit variation within country-occupation cells point to a sizeable positive effect of computer use on discretion, but to small or no effect on intensity at work. Our instrumental variable estimates point to an even more benign effect of computer use on job quality. Hence, the results suggest that the (moderate) deterioration in the quality of work observed in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015 has occurred despite the spread of computers, rather than because of them.

Jobs Queensland was established by the Queensland Government as a statutory entity to provide independent strategic advice on future skills requirements, workforce planning and development issues and apprenticeships and traineeships. The Honourable Shannon Fentiman, Minister for Employment and Small Business and Minister for Training and Skills Development has requested Jobs Queensland explore the future of work and the possible implications for employment and skills policy within Queensland. As Queensland moves further into the 21st century, differing viewpoints are emerging on the future of work. New contributions to the debate are published on an almost daily basis by academics, governments, think tanks, not-for-profits and the corporate sector alike. A range of views are being presented. Some are highly optimistic – ‘technology will solve all our problems’ and others highly pessimistic – ‘robots are going to take our jobs’. The work that Jobs Queensland has undertaken to date suggests that the subject is more complex. While technology is considered by many as the major factor influencing the future of work and the workforce, it is but one of three drivers of change. These three drivers comprise technology impacts; demographic and social changes; and legal, institutional and policy influences (Figure 1). The environment in which these drivers interact is often referred to as the ‘political economy’. Globalisation, another theme also discussed widely in the associated literature, is both cause and effect of these three drivers.

We present estimates of changes in skills utilisation and in the returns to skills in the UK for 2002-2016 using new measures of skills derived from a systematic and detailed matching between the US O*NET system and UK [Standard Occupational Classification] SOC. Over the period, there is strongly increasing utilisation of both analytical skills and interpersonal skills, and declining use of physical skills. A decomposition analysis reveals that most of the change in skills utilisation is within occupations rather than between occupations, suggesting that the changes are pervasive throughout employment. The returns to skills are estimated using a standard Mincerian earnings function. We find positive and significantly increasing returns to analytical skills throughout the period. While the returns to interpersonal skills are lower than to analytical skills, they are also increasing over time, and are significant especially post-2010. Finally, the returns to physical skills are significantly negative over the whole period. The results suggest that the UK labour market is strongly increasing its demand for both analytical and interpersonal skills.

The present technological revolution, characterized by the pervasive and growing presence of robots, automation, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, is going to transform societies and economic systems. However, this is not the first technological revolution humankind has been facing, but it is probably the very first one with such an accelerated diffusion pace involving all the industrial sectors. Studying its mechanisms and consequences (will the world turn into a jobless society or not?), mainly considering the labor market dynamics, is a crucial matter. This paper aims at providing an updated picture of main empirical evidence on the relationship between new technologies and employment both in terms of overall consequences on the number of employees, tasks required, and wage/inequality effect.

The shift away from manual and routine cognitive work, and towards non-routine cognitive work is a key feature of labor markets. There is no evidence, however, if the relative importance of various tasks differs between workers performing seemingly similar jobs in different countries. We develop worker-level, survey-based measures of task content of jobs - non-routine cognitive analytical and personal, routine cognitive and manual - that are consistent with widely-used occupation-specific measures based on O*NET database. We apply them to representative surveys conducted in 42 countries at different stages of development. We find substantial cross-country differences in the content of work within occupations. Routine task intensity (RTI) of jobs decreases significantly with GDP per capita for high-skill occupations but not for middle- and low-skill occupations. We estimate the determinants of workers' RTI as a function of technology (computer use), globalization (specialization in global value chains), structural change, and supply of skills, and decompose their role in accounting for the variation in RTI across countries. Computer use, better education, and higher literacy skills are related to lower RTI. Globalization (as measured by sector foreign value-added share) increases RTI in poorer countries but reduces RTI in richer countries. Differences in technology endowments and in skills' supply matter most for cross-country differences in RTI, with globalization also important. Technology contributes the most to the differences in RTI among workers in high-skilled occupations and non-offshorable occupations; globalization contributes the most to differences among workers in low-skilled occupations and offshorable occupations.

Technological change and its impacts on labour markets are a much-discussed topic in economics. Economists generally assume that new technology penetrating the labour market shifts firms' task demand. Given individuals' acquired and supplied skills, these task demand shifts potentially foster horizontal skill mismatches, e.g. individuals not working in their learned occupations. In this paper, I first analyse the relation between task shifting technological change and individuals' horizontal mismatch incidence. Second, I estimate individuals' mismatch wage penalties triggered by this relation. The present paper proposes an instrumental variable (IV) approach to map this mechanism and to obtain causal estimates on mismatch wage penalties. Applying this empirical strategy yields a wage penalty of roughly 12% for horizontally mismatched individuals.

We use data from a new international dataset - the European Skills and Jobs Survey - to create a unique measure of skills-displacing technological change (SDT), defined as technological change that may render workers' skills obsolete. We find that 16 percent of adult workers in the EU are impacted by SDT, with significant variance across countries, ranging from a high of 28 percent in Estonia, to below seven percent in Bulgaria. Despite claims that technological change contributes to the deskilling of jobs, we present evidence that SDT is associated with dynamic upskilling of workers. The paper also presents the first direct micro-evidence of the reinstatement effect of automating technology, namely a positive contribution of automation to the task content and skills complexity of the jobs of incumbent workers. Despite the recent focus on the polarising impact of automation and associated reskilling needs of lower-skilled individuals, our evidence also draws attention to the fact that SDT predominantly affects higher-skilled workers, reinforcing inequalities in upskilling opportunities within workplaces. Workers affected by SDT also experience greater job insecurity.

The Australian Government is investing $41.7 million to pilot Skills Organisations in two key industries: human services care and digital technology (including cyber security). The Skills Organisations Pilots will drive innovative 'end-to-end' training solutions and enhance the role and leadership of industry in the national training system. The Joyce Review proposed Skills Organisations be owned by industry and take a leadership role to support the [vocational education and training] VET system better meet the needs of employers, the economy and learners. The two pilots will trial new ways of working to shape the national training system to be more responsive to skills needs for those industries - from the identification of skills needs, to qualifications development, through to improving the quality of training delivery and assessment. Lessons from these pilots will help inform broader improvements to the national training system., According to the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family businesses 2018 Employment Projections, Health Care and Social Assistance is projected to make the largest contribution of any sector to employment growth, increasing by 250,300 jobs in the next five years. Digital technologies are essential to Australia's economy. The number of employed [information and communication technology] ICT and telecommunications professionals is projected to increase by at least 16 per cent by 2023, which equates to an additional 46,000 workers. In addition, the cyber security sector has estimated a need for 18,000 more employees for the sector to meet its full potential., Alongside implementation of the two pilot Skills Organisations, the Australian Government is seeking input from stakeholders, across the VET system, to explore opportunities for 'future-state' Skills Organisations to improve industry leadership and employer confidence in the VET system, as well as improving quality in learner outcomes. This information, in addition to learnings from the two pilot Skills Organisations, will inform future Government decisions about the Skills Organisation model, including how this approach could deliver a VET system more responsive to industry needs and expectations. To understand stakeholder views about the concept of establishing Skills Organisations beyond the pilots, the Department is holding national, co-design workshops with industry peak bodies, small and large employers, employee representative and others. The Department is seeking stakeholder views on a range of elements to understand whether and how the concept of Skills Organisations could drive improvements to employer confidence in the VET system to deliver the skills their organisations need now and into the future. This discussion paper has been created for public consultation, with submissions closing on 15 November 2019.