Future of work: on scarcity, skills and job happiness
No unknown phenomenon after the corona period: the note on the door of a restaurant that is unfortunately closed due to a lack of staff. The tightness in the labour market will not disappear in the future, but actually increase. Government and employers are looking for creative solutions. What can AI do? What ICT knowledge and skills will be in demand in the future? And what does the future of work mean for the way we develop ICT education?
Demographic trends such as ageing and de-greening, which refers to a decline in young people due to a lower birth rate, show that in 26 years' time, more people will retire than enter the labour market. The potential labour force will be only 60 per cent of the total population by 2050. Another trend is that although more and more Dutch people have started working, part-time work is relatively common. And we are not just talking about working parents or carers; the upcoming young generation Z consciously chooses to work part-time. Work is just one part of their lives. Earning enough is a prerequisite and not an end in itself. The number of young people working between 28 and 35 hours a week has doubled since 2003 and that line continues to rise.
Ton Wilthagen, labour market professor and Tilburg city professor, does not expect the demand for work to decrease. The Dutch economy is doing well. Moreover, there are many social tasks in society for which we need people, such as energy transition and ageing. To meet the demand in the care sector, 1 in 4 people would soon have to work in care. Furthermore, we aim to produce more locally and depend less on foreign countries. Wilthagen outlines a future perspective in which choices will have to be made. We do not know a command economy in the Netherlands, but it may become a realistic option with these trends.
Employers are looking for creative solutions to fill their vacancies. One example is that Enexis is recruiting bakers because their fine motor skills can be used for electrical work. Retraining is provided by Enexis itself. Attracting international talent is another tried and tested method to fill the shortages in the Brainport region, for instance. Another opportunity is the more than 1.2 million people who represent unprecedented talent and would like and could work, but are (still) not in the picture. The director of Brainport told the XLT that they are looking at reaching out to people from this group and giving them access to the labour market.
Besides training and recruiting new employees and digitising work to need fewer staff, there is a growing focus on keeping existing employees vital and happy. Jeroen Driessen, CEO of Driessen Group, sums up job happiness with the three p's, pleasure, purpose and people. In other words, doing cool things together that matter. "And work-happy employees make for happy customers," says Driessen.
ICT is a shortage sector with a tight labour market. Demand for ICT workers is expected to continue to grow. According to UWV (2023), employers are mainly looking for highly skilled ICT workers who want to work full-time. Those candidates are hard to find. Lifelong development (LLO) is becoming more important. More than 60% of employed ICT workers are expected to need additional education or training before 2027 to keep up with rapid technological developments. This mainly concerns improving analytical skills and being able to deal with AI. This means that employers must continue to invest in training and developing their staff.
What is also interesting is how developments in ICT, such as generative AI, will affect the future of work. In a December 2023 report by the Rathenau Institute, researchers raise the important questions of to what extent AI systems will take over jobs, to what extent people will interact with the systems, and to what extent technology will enable new jobs. Jobs consist of bundles of tasks, and technology often takes over only part of the job set. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, calculated that in 80% of jobs, at least 10% of tasks could be automated with generative AI. Working people will thus have time to do other things, and in turn learn new skills. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) expects, partly for this reason, that GAI systems will mainly support human work.
Research confirms the statement that with our ICT training we are preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist. Jobs that did not exist 10 years ago, such as cloudless computing specialist and drone operator, demonstrate the importance of teaching skills that can be applied in the jobs of the future. The Future of Jobs survey by the World Economics forum identifies the most essential skills of the future every five years. The top 15 most desired skills for 2025, set in 2020, has a top three with at one: analytical thinking and innovation, at two: active learning and learning strategies and at three: complex problem solving. Jeroen Driessen also foresees that diplomas will say less than skills & competences in the future.
In summary, the future of work touches ICT education and research in several facets. ICT research can help solve labour market bottlenecks. For instance, what can AI do in this regard? And to accelerate digital transformation, ICT education could be more strongly integrated into all education and training. Further training and upskilling of workers is growing in importance, possibly blurring the line between school and work; employers are also investing in their own training, for instance. For graduates, the employers of the future may be less interested in the title of the education than in their acquired knowledge and skills. And for future employers, job happiness, with flexible, meaningful work that you do together, is important. Not only to retain employees, but also because work-happy teachers, support and staff together make for 'study-happy' students.