Digitalization: a new driver for changes in employment forms

Abstract

"Regarding the long-term tendency of more heterogeneity and inequality in employment, digitalization has a certain potential to become a new driver. First of all, this is due to the impact of digital technologies on structural change. Parts of the labour market, which are favoured by the emergence of digitalization, particularly employment in services or employment of women, are those in which one can already today observe a greater spreading of regular part-time work. There are also indications that digital technologies may influence the relationship between dependent employment and self-employment. Due to the lowering of transaction costs through innovative platforms, market coordination is getting more attractive. New types of self-employment such as crowd employment have a potential in certain market segments and may, therefore, gain in importance in future. Since mobile work and working at home will become much easier through digital technologies, traditional concepts of measuring working hours may lose in importance. They might increasingly be replaced by new forms of output-orientation. There are also no indications that the long-term trend towards wage inequality might fundamentally be reversed through new technologies. This is mainly because low-skilled workers and other problem groups of the labour market would probably face even more difficulties to (re-)enter the labour market and well-paid manufacturing jobs are endangered." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Walwei, U. (2020): Digitalization: a new driver for changes in employment forms. In: The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (Hrsg.) (2020): Dignity and the Future of Work in the Age of the 4th Industrial Revolution, getr. Sz.