Employment and Social Developments in Europe: 2018 review confirms positive trends but highlights challenges, in particular linked to automation and digitalisation

Today, the Commission has published the 2018 edition of its yearly Employment and Social Developments in Europe (ESDE) review.

This year’s edition confirms the ongoing positive labour market trends as well as an improving social situation. The numbers of people in employment reached new record levels. With almost 238 million people having a job, employment has never been higher in the EU. In 2017 over three and a half million more people were in employment, compared with 2016. However, while the number of hours worked per person employed has grown in recent years, they are still below the 2008 levels. […]

The Employment and Social Developments in Europe review 2018

The Employment and Social Developments in Europe review 2018

The European Commission has published its yearly Employment and Social Developments in Europe review, highlighting positive trends among the labour market and challenges in automation and digitalisation.

In this year’s edition of the Employment and Social Developments in Europe review (ESDE) it reveals ongoing positive labour market trends, as well as an improvement over the social element. How was the overall rate of employment in 2017?

As reported on the Commission’s website , in 2017 there were over three and a half million more people in employment compared with 2016. Alongside this, it was found in the report that […]

The Impact of Technology on East Asian Economic Prospects

The Impact of Technology on East Asian Economic Prospects

Technology As ASEAN+3 economies pursue growth and resilience a decade after the onset of the global financial crisis, one question looms large: Is technology a boon or bane for these states?

The most advanced economies, such as Japan, Korea, and Singapore, are better-positioned than the rest of the region to face the challenges posed by technology. However, the impact of technology on growth and employment does not materialize in isolation. Rather, it manifests itself in interactions with ongoing changes in the nature of cross-border production and trade and shifts in demographics.

The technology-related challenges that emerge for economies across the region […]

Voice – The Interface Between Supply Chain Tech and Humans

Voice – The Interface Between Supply Chain Tech and Humans

It’s the era of the new consumer.

We must adapt supply chains rapidly to meet customer expectations. Trends like reverse logistics, same-day-delivery and mobility result in new business models, stressed logistics systems and deconsolidating networks. We’re also in the midst of a shrinking talent pool. Competing with rising wages and attractive employment alternatives for this generation is pivotal in landing the top talent.

How do we handle this? By evolving our operations with the tools and technologies of the automated and connected supply chain of the future. This means meeting the demands of the next-generation consumer and the tech-savvy worker with […]

Fear Not, Truckers: Robot Replacements Are Decades Away

Fear Not, Truckers: Robot Replacements Are Decades Away

The truck drivers who stand to lose their jobs to automated-driving technology? Many of them haven’t been born yet.

For all of today’s fretting over the potential for massive unemployment associated with the deployment of self-driving vehicles, a report issued last week by a transportation-policy think tank says the first ripples from automation won’t reach the labor market until the mid-2030s. Widespread impact won’t occur for more than a quarter of a century.

Even then, the report, published by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), suggests job impacts will be minimal rather than a catalyst for broad economic turmoil. The SAFE think […]

Does automation create jobs

QA Automation Engineer jobs at The If you are a tech professional who wants to directly apply for jobs, do NOT please create a new account to apply for jobs Are Robots Going To Kill Your Next Job Or were doomed by their hesitation to adopt automation. Search Brookings. As a result, many fear that technology is creating job-stealing robots. A new report from Citi and the Oxford Martin School explores the varying impact that automation of jobs will have on countries and cities around the world, in the near future and the coming decades. Forbes blogger Tim Worstall […]

Understanding Moravec’s Paradox And Its Impact On Current State Of AI

Understanding Moravec’s Paradox And Its Impact On Current State Of AI

Moravec’s Paradox is named after AI researcher Hans Moravec who authored a paper in the 1980s which theorised that low-end tasks require more complex computational power to be automated. In the current context, his theory is coming to fruition with leading IT giants like Amazon and Google; or Microsoft’s virtual assistants understanding speech and solving queries. Ramkumar Balasubramanian, science associate director at Accenture observed in a post that while it is easier to program a task done by high-end database administrators, it is difficult to replicate the task of a service desk agent. Moravec, who is also an adjunct […]

AI, AUTOMATION, AND THE FUTURE OF WORK: TEN THINGS TO SOLVE FOR

BRIEFING NOTE PREPARED FOR THE TECH4GOOD SUMMIT, ORGANIZED BY THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY JUNE 2018

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming businesses and will contribute to economic growth via contributions to productivity. They will also help address “moonshot†societal challenges in areas from health to climate change. At the same time, these technologies will transform the nature of work and the workplace itself—which is the focus of this briefing note. Machines will be able to carry out more of the tasks done by humans, complement the work that humans do, and even perform some tasks that go beyond what humans […]

Kate Green: There’s no need to fear automation – not if we apply these reforms

Kate Green: There’s no need to fear automation – not if we apply these reforms

Automation doesn’t need to be something to fear. Instead it should be something to welcome and develop, offering the opportunity for more interesting work, increased leisure, and easier interpersonal connections and communication.

But alarmist stories abound of an ominous robot takeover (though I, for one, welcome the suggestion that they’ll be capable of assembling flat pack furniture). Despite this, parliamentarians have seemed surprisingly uninterested in digging deeper into the broader implications of automation beyond the immediate. Beyond large-scale pieces of work like Tom Watson’s future of work commission and the Fabian Society’s commission on automation, most parliamentarians are apparently taking […]

Guaranteed jobs may not solve the Democrats’ bigger problem with many voters

Policies to ensure everyone has a job sound appealing. But they may not help Democrats at the ballot box, and aren’t economically realistic.

The next big idea from the Democrats is a universal guarantee of a job to everyone who wants one.

Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Bernie Sanders, all potential candidates for president in 2020, have endorsed some version of the idea.Booker would start with a pilot program in 15 urban and rural areas, using federal funds to provide employment at $15 an hour.Gillibrand went considerably further. She told The Nation magazine, “Guaranteed jobs programs, creating floors for wages […]