The impact of new technologies on the labour market and the social economy
This STOA study investigates the potential employment effects of new information and communication technologies, by examining the relationship between innovation, new technologies, employment and inequality. It reviews the existing literature and experiences of previous technological revolutions, and argues that the race between job creation through new products, and job destruction from process innovation, has been won in the past by the job-creating effects of innovation. It concludes that there is an uneven distribution in the costs of digitalisation, because of the skills-biased nature of technological change - so the challenge of the future lies in coping with rising inequality from technological change. The study also proposes a set of policy options for dealing with the employment effects of digitalisation.
About this document
Publication type
Policy area
Keyword
- accounting
- BUSINESS AND COMPETITION
- digital divide
- distribution of wealth
- economic policy
- economic structure
- ECONOMICS
- EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
- employment
- EMPLOYMENT AND WORKING CONDITIONS
- globalisation
- impact of information technology
- information and information processing
- information technology and data processing
- innovation
- labour market
- labour market
- national accounts
- organisation of work
- organisation of work and working conditions
- PRODUCTION, TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
- productivity
- research and intellectual property
- social economy
- social framework
- social inequality
- SOCIAL QUESTIONS
- technological change
- technology and technical regulations
- unemployment due to technical progress
- updating of skills