Biffl / Biffl (eds. / Philip Integrating Low-Skilled Migrants in the Digital Age: European and US Experience - Conference Proceedings

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-903150-67-6
Verlag: Edition Donau-Universität Krems
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

This book compares the effects of digitalization and automation on the working lives of low-skilled migrants in Europe and USA. The comparative analysis outlines the change in work and workers, and offers practical suggestions for policy makers, practitioners and all those interested in successfully integrating migrants.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Biffl (eds., Gudrun

Martin, Philip

Biffl, Gudrun

Philip, Martin

Biffl

Leseproben

CHANGING JOBS AND WORKERS Changing Jobs and Migrant Workers: The Case of Europe Gudrun Biffl and Thomas Liebig1 Introduction This paper focuses on the changing world of work and migrant workers in the European Union. Rapid technological progress, globalization, increasing European integration, ageing and migration have changed the landscape of work and the composition of the workforce by age, gender, education, occupation and ethnic-cultural background. The world of work has been transformed by massive innovation in information and communication technologies, the introduction of robots, digital technologies and artificial intelligence. All these components of technological progress interact and result in fast industrial restructuring. Accordingly, technological as well as structural and process-related changes characterize the digital economy. (Arntz et al., 2016) As machines increasingly substitute routine jobs, manufacturing employment declines. At the same time jobs are created in the context of digitization and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI), above all at the higher end of the skills segment, often at the cost of low-skilled workers, particularly migrants. Economic and workplace restructuring is linked with a rise in atypical employment, away from full-time open-ended employment to temporary and contract jobs. In addition, job polarization occurs as demand for routine work declines and middle-income groups are hollowed out. Also, the traditional distinction between different forms of employment is becoming blurred with the platform economy entering the scene of work, testing the capacity of social welfare systems to cover all workers. The demographic and skills composition of the workforce is undergoing rapid change with migration playing an ever-increasing role. The latter is largely the outcome of rising intra-EU mobility as well as significant inflows of third-country workers and their families, and refugees from all corners of the world have also contributed. The changing landscape of work and workers represents a challenge for policy makers as the process of restructuring knows winners and losers. In order to ensure a competitive, inclusive and sustainable socio-economic environment, measures are taken to promote the adaptability of the workforce and to strengthen social cohesion. Changing Jobs and the role of migrants ICT developments, digitalization and artificial intelligence are generating an economic transformation that affects all industries on a scale, scope and complexity that may only be likened to the impact of the steam engine during the first industrial revolution. The transformations promote the growth of services rather than manufacturing. It can be taken from Figure 1 that between 2000 and 2015 the employment structure by industry and skills has shifted towards science and highly skilled professionals on the one hand and to labor intensive occupations that do not lend themselves easily to technologically induced productivity increases on the other. The latter is reinforced by demographic ageing and the concomitant increasing demand for health and care services. Between 2000 and 2015, total employment in the EU28 has increased by 6.7% (+14.5 million) to 229.3 million. This substantial employment growth is entirely due to services growth, with an increase of 18.8% (+26.1 million) to 164.9 million workers in 2015. In contrast, employment in manufacturing declined by 15.7% (-5.9 million) to 31.8 million workers. Accordingly, the share of manufacturing in employment declined from 17.5% of all employed in 2000 to 13.9% in 2015. The employment share of the construction sector remained fairly stable at 6.3% or 14.4 million workers in 2015 (after 6.9%, 14.8 million workers, in 2000). Figure 1: Employment structure by industry in the EU28: 2010 and 2015 Source: EU KLEMS; ESDE 2018, data taken from chapter 2.1, chart2.1. Employment growth has been concentrated in science and research as well as professionals and engineers, raising their share in total employment from 9% in 2000 to 12.5% 2015 (+9.3 million, +47.7%, to 28.7 million). In these occupations, capital deepening was significant, with skilled labor often complementing machines – thereby creating jobs, while routine tasks in the lower and middle range of the skills segment – above all plant and machine operators in manufacturing and clerical support workers in services - tend to be substituted by robots and computers, to raise productivity and efficiency. The consequence of routine-biased technological change is increasing job polarization. (Goos et al., 2014; Acemoglu & Autor, 2011) However, not only highly skilled professionals are in rising demand but also laborintensive health and health care services together with social services. The share of this group of workers has risen from 8.7% to 10.5% of total employment between 2000 and 2015 (+5.5 million, +29.5% to 24.1 million workers). The employment growth of the Health and Social Work sector is expected to remain dynamic, given a continued rise in the numbers and the share of over 65-year-olds in the total population until 2100. (Eurostat, 2019) Not only the demand for skilled labor increased but also their supply, flowing from an autonomous increase of skills via the education system, and an augmentation via migration. This assessment can be substantiated by the rising proportion of highly skilled persons among younger birth cohorts: in 2019 45% of the 30-34-year-old workers were highly skilled compared to 38% of the 25-64-year-olds. (Figure 2) Also, the speed of upskilling over time is faster among younger cohorts than older ones (2002: 26% vs 24%). Figure 2: Composition of employment by educational attainment in the EU28 in %: 2002-2019 Source: Eurostat, EU-LFS. In spite of the concomitant increase of demand and supply of skilled workers, matching of demand and supply becomes increasingly difficult. Those graduating today are more often overqualified for their first job than the graduates of the 1990s. According to the Europe 2020 indicators of employment, in 2017 22.7% of employed tertiary graduates were in occupations not requiring their level of education, +1.9 percentage points vs 2008. (EU 2018) This is in part due to a greater diversity of job tasks and nonstandard work practices and processes at all skill levels, for which the education system does not necessarily prepare; in addition, artificial intelligence and digital technologies accelerate the change in occupational competences required to fulfil the tasks of a digital economy. Robots and digitalization tend to reduce the demand for middle-skilled and low-skilled workers. This tendency is more pronounced today than in previous waves of technological progress. (Nedelkoska & Quintini, 2018) These developments suggest that there is a need for continued education and training for large segments of the workforce, but above all for low-skilled workers. (Cedefop, 2018) The internet and innovative technologies create a new group of workers, many of them on short-term tasks in the gig economy. This labor market segment developed in the aftermath of the 2008/09 global economic recession as more and more people lost their jobs and consequently turned to whatever was available. A series of innovators seized their chance with new gig apps and websites. Jobs included both low-skilled one-off services, e.g. food delivery, as well as higher-skill contract and freelance work, e.g. web development. Digital labor markets which are organized around collaborative platforms are becoming more and more prominent. (Kässi & Lehdonvirta, 2016) These internet-based platforms create an open marketplace for professional service providers as well as private individuals. They allow the remote delivery of electronically transmittable services (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Upwork, Freelancers, etc.) as well as digital matching and administration processes where the delivery of the services requires direct interaction locally. The findings of Codagnone et al. (2016) indicate that the platform workers want to earn money by undertaking these activities, but the earnings tend not to suffice to make a living; the workers are mostly under-employed or self-employed. The majority are men and university graduates, even though the activities do not, for the most, require high levels of education. This may be due to the fact that better educated people tend to be more comfortable with ICT applications than low-skilled workers. Figure 3: Share of employment status in total employment in the EU28 in %: 2002-2019 Source: Eurostat, EU-LFS. Surveys indicate that there are large differences in the take-up of platform work in the EU. While estimates for Germany suggest that less than 1% of the adult population engages in platform work (Maier et al., 2017), the proportion is higher in the UK with some 4% and in the Netherlands with 9% (Pesole et al., 2018). While these numbers are still comparatively small, the upward trend is gaining momentum. This provides challenges for governments regarding taxation, and there is also concern regarding lack of coverage by social protection systems. Since there is no formal employment relationship, platform workers count as self-employed. In view of pronounced competition among platform workers, compensation for the services supplied tends to be low and job security is virtually non-existent, which turns platform workers into a particularly vulnerable group of workers. In spite of all the above developments, the majority of workers in the EU28 continues to...