The automation of the labour market between digital innovation, skill mismatch, and lifelong learning

In the medium to long-term, automation is going to affect the global labour market not only by increasing technological unemployment and polarisation of work, but also by stimulating the growth and spread of new high-skilled figures. In this respect, the World Economic Forum (2018) estimates the creation of 133 million qualified professionals in the face of a displacement of 75 million jobs by the end of 2022, while the McKinsey Global Institute (2017) foresees an even more drastic scenario over the next ten years and assesses the loss of workplaces due to repetitiveness of tasks and obsolescence around 400-800 million. Thus, policy makers need to keep pace with the evolution of the labour market by designing both juridical and socioeconomic measures concerning lifelong learning. In fact, whatever the number of jobs created or destroyed by digitalisation, it’s clear that the population will need to adapt to changes and acquire higher skills and marketable competences. In this respect, individual learning accounts (ILAs), as stated by OECD, are one of the best methods to face the growing skill mismatch, which keeps silently affecting the efficiency and productivity of the labour market. However, developing a proper a unique model when it comes to lifelong learning and continuous training still remains difficult. Indeed, the recent growth of non-standard workers has hindered the definition of efficient schemes for reskilling and upskilling, since the fragmentation of professional careers throughout the course of all working life complicates the portability of training policies. While some countries rely on the social parts’ efforts to bring an “individual right to continuous learning” in the collective bargaining (e.g. Italian National Collective Bargaining Agreement for metal workers of Federmeccanica 2016), others prefer to undertake legislative interventions in order to fully implement ILO recommendations regarding skill development and empower citizens with personal credit-accounts for their own education (e.g. Compte personnel de formation for France, SkillsFuture Credit in Singapore). For these reasons, the international labour law needs to assume a stronger position in the policymaking and supervise the implementation of lifelong learning and continuous training measures in order both to empower individuals with their own professional future and to mitigate the negative effects of automation. In particular, a law and economics approach could not only strengthen the cooperation between social players and policy makers, but also support the population in the fight against the growing skill mismatch and obsolescence of repetitive works.