The future of work is accelerated by the COVID-19
This year’s edition of the World Economic Forum’s report "The Future of Jobs 2020" analyzes the disruption caused by COVID-19 and the future outlook for jobs and skills, in the current context of global economic recession and speed up of digitalization.
Some of the main findings of the report are as follows:
- The automation along with current COVID-19 recession are creating a ‘double-disruption’ for workers: The report estimates that “by 2025, automation and a new division of labor between humans and machines will alter 85 million jobs worldwide and 97 million new functions will emerge throughout the surging demand for workers who can fill green economy jobs and digital ones (related with data and AI economy, cloud computing…)
- The report also highlights the importance of the human factor in some jobs: Those where “humans are called upon to retain their comparative advantage” vs the machines, such as for care economy jobs; roles in marketing, sales and content production, as well as roles of management, counseling, decision making, reasoning, communication and personal interaction.
- In this rapidly changing labor market, the role of reskilling and upskilling is gaining relevance: According to the report, by 2025, “44% of the skills that employees will need to perform their roles effectively will change”. The report shows that “on average, companies estimate that around 40% of workers will require reskilling of six months or less and 94% of business leaders report that they expect employees to pick up new skills on the job (a sharp uptake from 65% in 2018)”.
- As a final conclusion the report alerts that “in the absence of proactive efforts, inequality is likely to be exacerbated by the dual impact of technology and the pandemic recession”
Filter results
According to @IMF, the capacity of fiscal and monetary policy to mitigate financial stability risks is more limited today than it was during much of the past two decades, given high debt levels and inflation in many jurisdictions.
According to Ramón Casilda, “it is no longer just a matter of Spanish capital investing in Latin America, but also of Latin American capital using Spain as a European base,” reinforcing a more balanced transatlantic economic space.
According to José Carlos Díez, Professor of Economics at the University of Alcalá, Spanish households have access to some of the cheapest mortgages in Europe, with interest rates below both Euribor and long-term government bond yields.
According to the IEE, Spain's business tax burden exceeds the European Union average, both as a share of total tax revenues and as a percentage of GDP.
AEB, CECA and UNACC propose measures to increase banks' lending capacity by more than €2 trillion in the euro area, including over €250 billion in Spain, providing additional resources to strengthen banks and finance new investment.
According to Boston Consulting Group, regulation brought in after the GFC strengthened the financial sector’s resilience but institutionalized bias towards removing all risk over economic growth.
According to Ramón Casilda, the EU–Mercosur agreement will generate annual tariff savings of around €4 billion, which is significantly higher than the savings expected under the agreements with Canada and Japan.
Economist José Carlos Díez notes that Spain’s banking sector has an excess of deposits and sufficient liquidity to meet the credit demand of companies and households, and does so at the lowest interest rates in Europe, according to the ECB.
According to CEPS, regulatory and supervisory complexity acts as a structural constraint on integration, investment and market depth, with costs that weigh most heavily on smaller institutions, new entrants and cross-border business models.
According to the ECB, an efficient, secure and integrated payment system would strengthen the international role of the euro and deliver benefits such as lower financing costs, reduced exposure to exchange rate fluctuations and greater protection against sanctions.
According to the IEA one key debate in the EU on financial regulation simplification is whether to explicitly include competitiveness, efficiency or contribution to growth as objectives of the regulatory agencies, following the UK example.
According to IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change, deeper and more integrated financial markets would strengthen the euro’s global role. This requires, among other elements, resilient and interoperable payment systems and completing the banking union.