The Labour Market Facing Old and New Challenges: The Covid-19-Pandemic, what’s Next?

Abstract

"The paper discusses the challenges of the current “transformative recession” for the labour market. After years of an almost unstoppable upswing, the corona-crisis smashed the labour market. Employment went down significantly and unemployment increased. In addition, short-time work reached an all-time-peak. At the same time, the economy is confronted with a process of continuous transformation. In recent years, it became clearly apparent that demography, digitization, climate protection and changes in the international division of labour cause fundamental changes for the economy as well as the labour market. Conceptual and theoretical considerations show, that both, economy and the labour market, will take a long time to reach pre-crisis levels. However, the key for the recovery is not mainly located in the playing field of economic and fiscal policy but in the area of health protection. In addition, the pandemic will accelerate the economic transformation. This is obvious regarding digitization, which reveals its economic advantages during the pandemic. Other urgent challenges such as climate protection will definitely remain. Against this background, it will be decisive for labour market policies to address the crisis and the transformation at the same time, preferably by an intelligent combination of measures oriented at short-time impacts and long-term investment." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Walwei, U. (2020): Arbeitsmarkt vor alten und neuen Herausforderungen: Die Covid-19-Pandemie und was danach kommt? In: Sozialer Fortschritt, Vol. 69, No. 11, p. 749-770. DOI:10.3790/sfo.69.11.749