The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
The future of work and skills is the study of how technology, demography, climate and institutions change the tasks people do, the skills they need, the terms on which they work and the paths they follow through education and careers. This page defines the field, explains why it matters for society, sets out what experts study and shows how it connects to other risks.
Risk fieldWhere systemic stress concentrates across the areas GCRI works in. Illustrative levels, not findings.
The Future of Work and Skills field covers work, automation, skill formation and institutional adaptation to fast technological change. Experts in it study questions such as labour market change and automation and jobs, with methods such as economics and development economics as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its counterparts at GRF and GRA look at the same systems through governance and finance.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Which tasks technology substitutes for, complements or creates.
How people acquire, maintain and transfer skills across a working life.
Labour law, social protection, education and employment services.
The field joins economics and development economics, which explains how technology changes the demand for different kinds of work, with social and behavioural science, which studies how people learn, choose and experience work, and econometrics, which tests claims against data. It draws on artificial intelligence and machine learning and robotics and automation to understand what technology can actually do.
Its basic unit is the task. Jobs are bundles of tasks; skills are the capacities that let people perform them; institutions, from schools and employment services to labour law and social insurance, shape how people acquire skills and move between jobs.
Which sectors and occupations are growing or shrinking, and why? See Labour market change and Automation and jobs.
How are safety and the organization of work changing? See Occupational safety and Digital work and platforms.
How do people enter work and keep their skills current? See Education to work transition and Lifelong learning.
How do organizations plan their workforces and societies protect workers in transition? See Institutional workforce planning and Work and social protection.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Just transition | Greening the economy in a way that is fair and inclusive for workers and communities. |
| Social dialogue | Negotiation, consultation and information exchange between governments, employers and workers. |
| Skills mismatch | A gap between the skills workers have and those their jobs or employers require. |
| Systemic risk | Risk arising from the interactions and dependencies within and between systems, where a shock can propagate and threaten the functioning of the whole. |
Work connects to AI, health, inequality, public finance and trust. Dependencies and consequences explains those links. Governance dialogue is convened at The Global Risks Forum (GRF) through Innovation Nexus and AI and Digital Governance, and pension and institutional funds are examined at The Global Risks Alliance (GRA) through Institutional Funds Nexus.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.