Abstract
The accelerated development of information and communication technologies (ICT) over the last three decades has encouraged researchers to analyse the impact of this phenomenon on the labour market. The potential decline in employment resulting from the proliferation of ICT may reduce access to basic energy services and even lead to energy poverty in the form of inability to heat the apartment as needed, allocating a significant part of revenues to expenses related to heating or problems with the timely payment of energy bills. Because access to energy is of fundamental importance for improving the quality of life and is crucial from the point of view of economic development, it is justified to verify the hypothesis that the accelerated development of ICT in EU countries may contribute to an increase in unemployment and, consequently, translate into a higher level of energy poverty. The described research results were obtained thanks to a comparative factor analysis based on secondary data. The analysis showed that in the period 2009–2019, the use of ICT had a limited impact on the unemployment rate in the EU and had a significant impact on reducing the level of energy poverty in EU Member States. As regards the impact of ICT factors on the level of energy poverty, only IP traffic showed a significant impact in this area. When it comes to the labour market, it was found that employment is chiefly influenced by economic factors such as labour costs.
Highlights
The last few decades have seen a very intensive development of information and communication technologies (ICT)
- The third effect results from the increased demand for new products from ICT-based innovations that will create new demand as well as new jobs [77]. This opinion is confirmed by other studies—the emergence of technological unemployment may be a consequence of increased productivity thanks to process innovations offered by ICT, which allow for producing goods and services with less labour
The selected indicators relating to technological changes are of no significance and their impact is negligible, with unemployment rate falling by 0.46 p.p. in Spain and by 0.02 p.p. in Portugal, if the level of mobile Internet traffic rises by 1 unit
Summary
The last few decades have seen a very intensive development of information and communication technologies (ICT). Niu et al [43] conducted a panel study for 50 countries divided into four groups according to income for 1990–2009 and showed that, between electricity consumption and five indicators of human development, among which can be distinguished GDP per capita, level of expenditure, urbanisation rate, average length adult life and literacy, there is a long-term two-way relationship. Households either spend above-average amounts of their income on heating, cooling, lighting, cooking and household appliances (which reduces expenses for other needs), or they forgo these expenses, which causes health problems, general discomfort and lowers their standard of living [57] Both types of behaviour occur most frequently in energy-poor households, which may result in a significant deterioration of the physical and mental health of people [58,59,60]. Living in energy poverty has an impact on daily practices, lifestyle and social exclusion [54,59,60]
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