How can Europe tackle the three employment challenges: the digital, the climate and the pandemic transition?
Abstract
Abstract
Never before in modern times has Working Europe been faced with such a fundamental and far-reaching transition pressure. We are in the beginning of two powerful transition processes, the innovation-driven digital transformation, and the policy-driven climate transition. On the top of these processes we are now facing a pandemic-driven restructuring of important sectors of our economies. Are our labour market regimes and policies fit for these challenges? Are we finally witnessing “the end of work” and an extended period of being Left Behind? Or can we build up capacities to deal with these three fundamental challenges? In this paper the authors discuss these issues based on the most recent labour market research and statistics and present some preliminary conclusions on the new forms of transition mechanism, and the scaling-up of European and national labour market transition policies as part of the Next Europe recovery strategy. It is not easy to predict the content, quality and volume of a skill development needs caused by the triple challenge of climate change, digitalisation, and Covid-19. We suggest, however, that the EU Commission should develop a transition capacity indicator corresponding to at least one fifth of the labour force and to recommend new springboards and bridges to work for the next years to come. We are convinced that this is the most productive and profitable investment Europe can do.
Keywords: Digitalisation, climate change, green deal, Covid-19, just transition, skill gap
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
