Category: Uncategorized

 

For IT employees the gap widens to 17%.

 

Cecilia Jona-Lasinio and Francesco Venturini of the University of Perugia sought to measure the extent to which wage dispersion, where workers who do similar jobs are paid differently, is caused by firms’ propensity to invest in upskilling. The authors analysed spending both on general training and on IT-specific courses.

 

“Training is seen as a tool for improving employees’ opportunities and working conditions, and for increasing company productivity,” Cecilia Jona-Lasinio said. “The need for training increases with the pace of technological change. With adoption of new technologies and acceleration of automation, formal education and experience are not sufficient, so new competencies are required.”

 

While previous studies showed 16% of European workers are exposed to skill-displacing technological change, the paper from Jona-Lasinio and Venturini shows that the adverse effects of digitalisation can be also tackled at the company level through training policies.

 

The authors analysed data from 112,000 companies, employing between 10 and 999 workers, from twelve European countries, and found that 65% provided general training, with the highest proportions observed in France (84%) and the lowest in Bulgaria (26%). One-third of the companies also offered training in advanced digital skills, with the highest number in the UK, Norway, Germany and Denmark.

 

Data show that firms which invest in training tend to be bigger. The highest wages are paid by organisations where the spending on upskilling is the highest, and where the largest share of the workforce is trained. In terms of the type of training, i.e. internal or external offered by a specialised institution, the combination of both yields the best results, as it gives employees a mixture of company-specific skills and more general ones.

 

“On an individual level our study shows that people who want to earn more should be ready for lifelong learning, and search for employers who offer training,” – Francesco Venturini says. “Our study also suggests that the wage differences across firms might widen if laggard companies were unable to systematically organise training. We should keep this in mind when designing policies on innovation and support for companies.”

 

Cecilia Jona-Lasinio & Francesco Venturini (2022). Firm human capital investment, wage inequality and employment (Deliverable 5.4). Leuven: UNTANGLED project 1001004776 – H2020.

 

The paper is available here

 

The event will take place in Brussels on 9 November 2022 and feature a keynote address from Anna Salomons, Professor of Employment and Inequality at Utrecht University.

We will have four sessions, 16 papers, and roundtable:

• Session 1: Technological change and employment
• Session 2: Skills and education
• Session 3: Technology, growth and value chains
• Session 4: Firms and households

Register before November 1 HERE.

All the detailed information is in the Programme below. Any queries can be emailed to Ilse Tobback at: ilse.tobback@kuleuven.be

 

This is an open format driven by participants’ contributions. It can be a platform for you to promote an ongoing project or research, tap into attendants’ collective intelligence for a specific question or simply to enjoy a dynamic thematic conversation. It is an informal online gathering among colleagues (or those to be), to enable exchange between experts, researchers and stakeholders from the fields of digitalisation, globalisation, migration, work, employment, skills etc. and promote exchange and communication among them.

Participants are kindly asked to register and decide if they want to actively contribute or just listen and discuss.

Active contributions consist in one slide (to be submitted to untangled@zsi.at beforehand) and a 5-minute presentation (“elevator pitch”). Listening, receiving information and asking questions is just as welcome. Further contact and networking is up to participants. Collections of slides and announcements will be shared among participants and/or publicly.

Contributions can be:

• any information on an ongoing initiative, project or a result,
• a future-oriented announcement (call for papers, event invitation, search for collaborators)
• a question asked of participants.

 

With a median age of 44.1, Europe is now the region with the oldest population in the world. Between 1995 and 2021 the share of people aged 50-64 rose substantially in the majority of the EU’s 27 member states, with the highest increases registered in Austria, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Europe will be challenged further by demographic changes over the next few decades, even under favourable assumptions about fertility and migration, and the economic effects are not yet fully understood.

In a new study, economists Robert Stehrer and Maryna Tverdostup from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) looked at how an ageing population affects the growth and automation of the economy in the EU27.

 

“On the one hand, there is the theory that a demographic time bomb is ticking in Europe, leading to a period of slow growth,” says Tverdostup. “On the other hand, there are also a number of studies which show that countries with a more rapidly ageing population grow faster and invest more in automation. We wanted to check which of these is true for the EU.”

 

In their key findings the authors conclude that the relationship between population ageing and annual economic growth, measured by growth in GDP as well as GDP per capita, shows a weak negative correlation.

 

“This means that the ageing of the population in the EU could contribute to weaker growth,” says Stehrer, pointing out that a similar negative relationship between the ageing of the labour force and economic growth has been found in several US states.

 

Robotisation depends on development, not ageing

 

While many propose the introduction of new technologies as a solution to the “silver tsunami” of ageing societies, the researchers found no significant link between robotisation and ageing.

 

“Our results suggest that the level of robotisation is largely dependent on the level of economic development and other absorptive capacities,” says Stehrer.

 

The study was conducted as part of the EU-funded UNTANGLED project, which aims to examine how the three megatrends of globalisation, technological change and demographic change affect labour markets in the EU and beyond. The authors investigated the effect of an ageing population on economic growth, investment in information and communication technologies, software, databases and robotisation in the 27 EU member states. They analysed national data, Eurostat figures on the capital stock by asset types, the EU Labour Force Survey and data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

 

Robert Stehrer, Maryna Tverdostup (2022). Demography, capital accumulation and growth (Deliverable 3.2) Leuven: UNTANGLED Project 1001004776 – H2020.

The paper, is available to download here

 

 

 

The event, featured presentations by Inès Baer, head of Data, Analytics and Labour Market Studies at the Luxembourg Employment Agency (ADEM); Ludivine Martin, a LISER researcher and member of the UNTANGLED project; and Tania Treibich of the University of Maastricht.

To find out more click here.

 

 

 

The event, organised by UNTANGLED partner Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), is dedicated to researchers, policymakers and practitioners working on labour market issues. It will feature presentations from:

 

Inès Baer, Head of Data, Analytics and Labor Market Studies at Luxembourg’s Public Employment Service (ADEM)

 

Ludivine Martin, Research Scientist at LISER and a member of the UNTANGLED project

 

Tania Treibich, Associate Professor in Economics, Maastricht University and a member of the research project PILLARS – Pathways to Inclusive Labour Markets.

 

Researchers and representatives of social partners and public bodies discussed their experiences in commissioning, using and absorbing research, and recommended ways to make it easier for policymakers to use the results.

To find our more click here.

 

The workshop, organised by UNTANGLED partner ZSI in Vienna, aims to explore how we can improve research on three megatrends – globalisation, digitalisation and demographic changes – and their impact on various aspects of labour. Because one of the purposes of UNTANGLED is to develop scenarios and a framework to orient policies to benefit society, we put great emphasis on collaboration with stakeholders to ensure a variety of perspectives in the research process. The ambition of our workshop is also to reflect on and contribute to the flow of insights and ideas between policy, practice and research.

 

Researchers will talk about the methods they use and their results, reflecting on the explanatory power, limitations and policy implications of their research. Policymakers and practitioners will share their experience with commissioning and using research for their work.

 

We will talk about the implications of technological transformation, globalisation and demographic change for:

• Heterogenous impacts of mega trends on labour market outcomes
• Work related migration and skills
• Education and future skill needs, productivity growth
• (Regional/Rural-urban) convergence/divergence, EU economic governance, trade
• Technology and human capital
• (Wage/regional) inequality, social policy
• Covering the combined impact of two or more of the driving forces – technological transformation, globalisation, and demographic change – is considered an added value.

All the detailed information is in the Call for Papers below. Any queries can be emailed to Ilse Tobback at: ilse.tobback@kuleuven.be

 

 

During the session titled “Structural change and automation”, Lewandowski will speak about the paper The Drivers of Income Inequality in Europe – Automation, co-authored with UNTANGLED researchers Karina Doorley (ESRI), Jan Gromadzki (IBS), Dora Tuda (ESRI) and Philippe Van Kerm (LISER).

 

Albinowski will present The impact of technology on labour market outcomes of demographic groups in Europe, written together with Lewandowski, at the poster session “Labour market outcomes and technology in Europe”.

Conference details here