The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Work changes when technologies, contracts, skills and institutions change, and research on that change is often loud and weakly identified. This lab studies how automation, platform work, remote work, skills systems and workplace institutions reshape jobs and organisations, with designs that can tell a real effect from a trend. This page sets out the mechanisms, the measures, the data, the methods and the people who decide on the evidence.
GCRI · Established · service level R0
Future of work research studies how automation, platform work, remote work, skills systems and workplace institutions reshape jobs and organisations. Much of the debate is loud and weakly identified; credible designs separate exposure to a technology from its actual effect and register their analysis plans before workplace trials.
For future of work lab, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and night lights with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on World; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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For future of work lab, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and night lights with true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on World; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
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Workforce and institutional change research. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Technologies automate or augment specific tasks, not whole occupations. Jobs are rebundled, skill demands shift within roles, and the effect on employment depends on how firms reorganise work around the tool.
Indices of which occupations are exposed to a technology describe potential, not outcome. Adoption, cost, regulation and bargaining decide what happens, so exposure indices need causal evidence before they inform policy.
Collective agreements, training systems, social protection and labour law shape whether change raises productivity and wages or shifts risk onto workers. The same technology can produce different outcomes under different institutions.
Experiments inside firms involve employees who may not feel free to refuse. Consent, worker representation, data protection and a real right to opt out decide whether a workplace study is ethical and its results credible.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Task exposure | The share of a job's tasks that a technology could in principle perform, which is not the same as job loss. |
| Pre-analysis plan | A registered document specifying a field experiment's hypotheses and analyses in advance. |
| Job quality | A multidimensional measure of work covering earnings, security, working conditions and autonomy. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Task exposure index | dimensionless index by occupation | annual | Task databases mapped to technology capability | MODELLED |
| Firm adoption of the studied technology | percent of firms | annual | Enterprise surveys | ESTIMATED |
| Adult skills proficiency | score on the survey scale | per survey cycle | OECD Survey of Adult Skills | OBSERVED |
| Job quality index | composite index | per survey cycle | Working conditions surveys | ESTIMATED |
| Participation in job-related training | percent of adults | annual | Labour force and adult education surveys | OFFICIAL |
| Pre-analysis plans for workplace trials | percent of trials registered before launch | annual | AEA RCT Registry | OFFICIAL |
| Worker representatives consulted | percent of workplace studies | per study | Study ethics records | DECLARED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization) | Employment, hours, wages and informality by country | Free and open, CC BY |
| OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) | Literacy, numeracy and problem solving of adults, with job tasks | OECD terms; microdata by release |
| O*NET (US Department of Labor) | Task, skill and work activity descriptors by occupation | Open, CC BY |
| ESCO (European Commission) | Multilingual classification of skills, competences and occupations | Free and open, attribution |
| European Working Conditions Survey (Eurofound) | Job quality, autonomy, work intensity and representation | Free for research, end-user licence |
| AEA RCT Registry (American Economic Association) | Registered field experiments and pre-analysis plans in economics | Free access, terms of use |
| National labour force surveys | Employment, occupation and training microdata | Terms per statistical office |
Nexus Labs prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Labour ministries and public employment services | Which training and transition programmes to fund or scale | Impact evaluations with credible comparison groups, cost data, effects by group |
| Employers and worker representatives | Whether and how to introduce a technology, with what consultation and safeguards | Pilot evaluation, task and job-quality effects, data protection assessment |
| Research ethics committees | Whether a workplace experiment protects voluntariness and personal data | Consent design, opt-out route, representation agreement, data minimisation |
| Research funders | Which questions on work and technology merit sustained funding | Evidence gaps mapped by strength of design, not by volume of commentary |
Economists analyse technological change at the level of tasks. A technology may substitute for some tasks, complement others and create new ones; the net effect on an occupation depends on the mix and on how employers reorganise work. Automation and AI tend to affect routine cognitive and manual tasks first, but recent tools also reach into tasks once thought to require judgement.
Other forces act alongside technology. Ageing populations change labour supply and care needs. Climate change raises heat exposure for outdoor and industrial workers and shifts employment between sectors during energy transitions. Trade and supply-chain disruptions can concentrate job losses in particular places, where the effects persist for years.
Institutions shape outcomes. The same technology can produce very different results depending on training systems, labour law, social protection and bargaining arrangements.
Classifications of work activities linked to employment data. They lag behind real change and vary between countries.
Surveys and registers tracking employment, earnings and transitions. Access is often restricted and linking sources raises privacy questions.
Randomised and quasi-experimental studies of training and matching programmes using causal inference. Results may not transfer across labour markets.
Controlled trials of new tools or practices inside organizations, under consent and ethics review.
Forecasts of jobs lost or created are highly sensitive to assumptions and are not presented as predictions. The lab reports scenarios with their assumptions.
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.