Some 40 million workers across advanced economies are unemployed. With many nations still facing weak demand—and the risk of renewed recession—hiring has been restrained. Yet there are also long-range forces at play that will make it more difficult for advanced economies to return to pre-recession levels of employment in the years to come. As a result, we see that the current disequilibrium in many national labor markets will not be solved solely with measures that worked well in decades past.
To help develop appropriate new responses, MGI examines five trends that are influencing employment levels and shaping how work is done and jobs are created:
- Technology and the changing nature of work
- Skill mismatches
- Geographic mismatches
- Untapped talent
- Disparity in income growth
The result of these five trends is a jobs and employment challenge in advanced economies that extends beyond restoring jobs lost to recession—many of which will never return, even with robust economic recovery. The jobs that will be created will not look like those that have been lost and may not be easily filled by today’s unemployed. The fundamental challenge is to understand how the nature of work is changing and to prepare as many workers as possible for the jobs of the future.
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