A changing world of work

Abstract

A changing world of work Becky Wright (bio) Today, the impact of broad labour market trends which have been shaping the UK labour market are colliding with post pandemic effects is focussing the policy world on 'the future of work'. However, the underlying shifts of industrial and occupational changes that are already being experienced by workers should play a greater role in our discourse. While it's important to think about the future, we also need to harness policy in the what workers are experiencing now. Health and social care, and hospitality were expected to be the fastest growing sectors of employment between 2021 and 2027. This is where the highest trade union membership densities are to be found These broadly are: ■ Strong growth in the numbers employed in business services, public ('non-marketed') services, and trade, accommodation and transport ■ Employment in construction, and 'primary sector and utilities' have remained comparatively low but broadly stable ■ Total employment in manufacturing has significantly declined. These sectoral trends have combined with and in part reinforced long-term shifts in the occupational composition of the UK workforce. These have followed a pattern that has been described as the polarisation of the labour market, or the 'hourglass economy', with increases in both higher and lower qualified roles and a reduction in 'medium-skilled' roles. Unions 21 produced trend report for unions to look at broad changes with an eye to implications for policy development. The report recognised that economic trend analysis is not a precise science and it is unlikely that the next five years will follow the exact paths traced here. However, the forecast data used for this report is based upon careful analysis of historic trends in combination with plausible assumptions about the likely impact of significant known factors. These include demographic change (eg a growing and ageing population likely to increase demand for retail, energy, construction and health and social care), advances in technology (with automation and AI impacting on middle skill occupations and job quality), and policy frameworks (from changes to migration and trade regimes resulting from Brexit, to shifts in production and consumption patterns dictated by the need to reduce carbon emissions). The Working Futures analysis upon which this report draws was completed before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. While we know that the pandemic and associated recession has had dramatic impacts on the labour market, official forecasts for aggregate employment levels now predict a reversion to previous trends over the next few years. We assumed that the 2020 Working Futures forecasts of industrial and occupational change remain a reasonable starting point for considering what the medium-term future may hold. The important qualifier to this judgment is that even if the impact of the pandemic on the aggregate employment levels proves to be largely short-term, it seems plausible that some shifts in the industrial and occupational composition of the UK workforce resulting from the pandemic may prove to be more long-lasting. These possibilities are discussed in more detail later on. For this section, then, we look at the absolute scale and relative proportion of additional jobs that were forecast for different sectors and occupations for the years 2021 to 2027. On this basis, looking at broad sectors, we would expect to see the largest absolute number of net new jobs between 2021 and 2027 to be in the following areas: ■ Health and social care (comprising Health, Residential care, and Social work), expected to grow by around 250,000 additional jobs ■ Hospitality (comprising 'Accommodation' and 'Food and Beverage services'), expected to grow by around 130,000 additional jobs ■ 'Support services' which comprise, primarily, operational and administrative services provided to businesses and public sector organisations such as security, cleaning, facilities management, travel services, call centres, and the supply of agency workers, and is expected to grow by around 85,000 additional jobs. Health and social care, and hospitality, were also expected to be the fastest growing broad sectors of employment between 2021 and 2027, each growing by around 5.5 percent. The third fastest growth area, expected to grow by over 4 percent, was information technology. This analysis was important for the trade union...