Today's society is undergoing a transformational change: Half of the people born today will live to be over 100 years old. These boys and girls are only two decades away from starting to think about their professional future. José A. Herce reflects on the jobs of the future in today's long-lived societies and those to come, without overlooking the modern history of work, as well as discussing retirement in an extraordinary context of super-longevity.
I've always liked to provoke... ideas. One of the most disruptive ideas I can think of as society plunges into the super-longevity phase we are in is for work to be so much fun and so rewarding that no one will want to stop working as long as they can. However, one need only review the modern history of work to realise that it is not precisely these qualities that adorn many of the jobs that have emerged from the modernisation of the economy in recent years.
The industrial revolution greatly multiplied the range and number of jobs that existed in the society of the ancien régime at the end of the 18th century. For almost a century, the advanced countries witnessed a dramatic increase in productivity, as well as rapid social, political and geostrategic change. Conditions for workers, whose services were then in almost permanent oversupply (reserve army), however, became extremely harsh until they developed a remarkable capacity for self-organisation through the creation of trade unions capable of defending their rights and demands.
Dialogue between workers and employers was never easy, reaching high levels of aggressiveness and violence. And in order to avoid revolutionary tensions among the proletariat, state intervention began to consist more and more in the establishment of laws to protect and guarantee workers' rights than in matters of public order.
The workers thus won hard-won rights which, in the first half of the 20th century, ended up materialising in impressive social gains and, years later, in a decisive participation of the working classes, together with employers and social democratic and Christian democratic parties in the post-war consensus which made possible the "golden age" of social and economic progress which characterised the advanced societies of the Western world in the first two decades of the second half of the 20th century.
The very brief historical synthesis of the three preceding paragraphs suffices to eloquently visualise something that we often forget, if we ever knew it. The times when workers' rights have been well defined and, at the same time, well served across the board have been very rare. The jobs of the 1950s to 1970s in the Western world, certainly with less nominal protection than today, allowed millions of workers access to home ownership and savings, paid holidays, the advancement of their children in quality education systems, quality health care, the accumulation of pension rights for retirement, disability and widowhood for spouses.
The "Atlantic Consensus" that brought together Western political leaders, and workers and employers on both sides of the ocean, to achieve social peace through a decent primary distribution of income, with decent wages and rights, and redistribution of income through progressive taxation schemes, is missing today.
In 1960, life expectancy at birth in countries such as the UK, France, Germany and the US was around 70 years. After the age of 65, which, however, was reached by about 70% of the population, and which also coincided with the most common retirement age, the remaining life expectancy was just over 14 years. Today, life expectancy at birth exceeds 80 years in advanced countries. More than 90% of the population of cohorts born 65 years ago reach this age, the remaining life at 65 is more than 20 years, half of these completely free of disability or disease, and the average effective retirement age is well below 65.
Workers who are retiring today in an advanced country, when they began their working careers in the early 1980s, have already witnessed the employment advances enjoyed by their parents, who were well into the second half of their working lives, and will live six or seven years longer in retirement than their parents. But they will have experienced a series of profoundly transformative employment and economic upheavals. They are also witnessing how younger workers are living through these transformations.
The working careers of those entering retirement today have already been affected by the virtual disappearance of the "job for life".
A prospect that was already beginning to threaten workers in the wake of the somewhat traumatic structural change brought about by industrial relocations at the beginning of the wave of globalisation that began in the last decade of the last century. The recurrence of episodes of unemployment, particularly virulent in the more rigid continental and southern European economies. Or the relative lack of protection, never fully corrected, of millions of self-employed workers, who are very numerous in all economies.
The labour transformations of the last four decades have been traumatic, unwanted, and have caused a rupture in the labour uniformity that had advanced so far since the end of the Second World War, thanks to the Atlantic Consensus.
A transformation that was never fully completed, but which created a sense that workers were respected not only as citizens, but also in their functional status. A golden age, it should be insisted, which also coincided with a strong expansion of productivity and welfare.
The break in the trend towards labour uniformity referred to above, or any other break in any trend, need not be traumatic, but almost all of them are to one extent or another. In that case, duality of labour emerged as a response to the narrowing of margins that offshoring brought not only to industry but, in cascade, to the entire productive structure of Western economies. The long oil crisis of the second half of the 1970s should be mentioned here as a not innocuous antecedent to the disturbing loss of Western industrial hegemony.
Dual employment is an emergency response, to avoid company closures and mass redundancies, but it destroys the progress of the "social rights account" of the workers concerned. Reduced working hours or recurrent interruption of employment (much worse the latter than the former) is lethal for the achievement of a decent pension. And in some countries, such as Spain, duality has become entrenched. Moreover, the breakdown of the advances of the "golden era", for whatever reasons, put an end to the principle of decent treatment of workers. Since then, the West cannot be said to have lived in mass unemployment or permanent recession. It is true that there was a severe recession in the early 1990s, another recession in the early 2000s, the great recession in 2009... but in between there were periods of impressive gains in productivity and, almost exclusively, corporate profits. The racket of job quality did not go up. The Atlantic Consensus had faded, probably because, in the meantime, the world that brought it about had changed radically and those who forged it were no longer the living memory of society.
It is inevitable to hold capital responsible for this development, many left-leaning analysts will think. But the truth is that the representatives of labour probably declined their role for who knows what reasons. What is certain is that today the vast majority of temporary workers do not want to be temporary workers, the majority of part-time workers do not want short-time work and a good half of the self-employed want to be salaried workers.
Surely never in the last seven decades has there been as much job dissatisfaction as there is today. And the big question is why have we let this happen? Let us discard easy answers, such as the simplistic view of class struggle, the demise of communism or the voracity of unchecked capitalism.
Guy Standing, professor of development economics at the University of Bath, popularised the eloquent term "precariat" in 2011, when he published The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. With this expression, Standing bridged a century and a half long gap with the term coined by Karl Marx: Proletariat. And, as a device, it must be admitted that he was right.
To all the developments alluded to above, since the end of the great industrial revolution, when Marx and Engels rightly diagnosed the situation of workers in the advanced countries of the time, the global event only comparable to that revolution which, in the opinion of their contemporaries, was only comparable to the neolithic revolution, is the digital revolution.
In reality, we have been living with robots (other than bread toasters, of course) for half a century and we are already beginning to know what can happen to work. In fact, the feeling is spreading among many ordinary people that there is going to be a hecatomb of human labour (the first time this expression has been used explicitly in this essay) at the hands of robots. The heralds of this hecatomb are the riders of home delivery platforms.
Nothing could be more logical and, at the same time, more wrong. Not the advance of precariousness, of course, which is undeniable. Precariousness of wages, of accumulation of rights, of full-time or recurrent work, and so on. Who does not have a family member or friend who suffers from some kind of job insecurity? Is this what awaits us under the generic headline of "the future of work"?
The future of work is bad, the sooner we know that the better. But the work of the future doesn't have to be bad.
In fact, we can make the jobs of the future so much better than the jobs of today that they are so much fun and so rewarding that no one wants to retire and we need to abolish pension systems for lack of use.
I am not prone to utopianism, and what I have just said has all the hallmarks of utopia. But admitting that more and more conventional and repetitive jobs are being automated or simply disappearing, I hasten to recommend that we radically change our training system to adapt it to the jobs of the future. This is no simple matter, because many of these jobs have not yet been invented. The jobs we see emerging and believe to be the jobs of the future, such as the jobs associated with the ecommerce logistics chain, in its delivery link, are going to be automated, just as the jobs in many other links of the same chain were automated decades ago, starting with those in the design, manufacturing and wholesale distribution of products that today are still delivered manually.
Human beings deserve nobler jobs, for which they need to be prepared. These jobs are about people, knowledge and creation. It has to do with self-care and self-sufficiency, which is another form of self-care. They are about conquering as yet unexplored personal and social frontiers. They have to do with sustainability in the face of a climate collapse, who knows if it is irreversible in some of its most disruptive aspects.
Supported by empowering technologies, distributed and accessible to all, human beings will be able to earn their livelihoods in a free, collaborative and remunerative way. The primary distribution of income must be based on legitimately acquired access to property, in an environment of competition and without privilege of any kind. So that redistribution (or secondary distribution) is not as necessary (and imperfect) as it is today.
Those who work for the community, either voluntarily or because their services lack an organised market, should have recognised rights to remuneration and should be granted "shadow" social contributions, the counterpart of which would be deferred rights over time.
We are not used to experiencing spectacular productivity growth, but it does exist. But they do not occur at the same time in all productive sectors, nor in all companies in a given sector, however new it may be. Many sectors are in decline, many companies fail, especially in emerging sectors. The destruction of resources that these processes entail reduces average productivity and these continuing mishaps overshadow the productivity gains of the companies and sectors with which the future of the economy is being written.
Another big question arises here: are we measuring productivity well? For it is not intuitive that the technological progress we are witnessing is so poorly reflected in the statistics. This is a perverse question. It is not to question the refined measures of productivity, one of the more traditional endeavours of economists. It is to ask about productivity sinks, i.e. where are we burning resources so that productivity statistics perform so poorly?
In the advancement of productivity (in a sustainable way, of course) lies the welfare of society. But this well-being will not be complete if it is not adequately distributed among individuals who work for themselves and for the community, with solvent access to property and without privileges acquired through market power based on the distortion of free competition.
On this basis, is it possible to envisage the emergence of full, flexible, health-friendly, vocational, paid and enjoyable jobs for everyone? This is the big question.
Half of the children born today will live to be over 100 years old. They are only two decades away from starting to think about their working lives in earnest, but someone has to be preparing for that future, and there is not much time left. In the meantime, the sprouts of that future, if the seeds have been planted in time and in the right soil, will be born by the time they take over the productive role in society. Their task, until then, will be to train themselves thoroughly, not without effort, as if they were students of the "industrial masters" of the 1960s, when the Spanish industrialisation that gave so many good jobs and salaries to so many workers took off. It will not be easy, but it is possible, it is a possible future.
-Surely never in the last seven decades has there been as much job dissatisfaction as there is today. And the big question is why have we let this happen?
According to studies, the causes of job dissatisfaction are low pay, poor relations with colleagues or bosses, little or no chance of promotion, insecure people, difficulty in adapting to the work environment, poor working conditions, personal and work circumstances, problems in reconciling work and family life.
These causes of job dissatisfaction have their origin both in the worker him/herself and in the company and/or the labour market. The cause of many of them can be found in the fact that eliminating them, or at least reducing them, has not been one of the objectives of the labour market.
Job dissatisfaction is an aspect that is particularly relevant when considering measures to increase the effective retirement age. Stimuli to encourage delayed retirement or flexible retirement will be of little use if the problems of job dissatisfaction are not tackled.
-Are we measuring productivity correctly?
If we understand only that the more work workers are able to do in the shortest possible time, the greater the productivity, we would be making a biased analysis of productivity and leaving many important issues behind. Measuring productivity at work, in an appropriate way, allows companies to detect areas for improvement, propose new strategies or make decisions without improvising.
In fact, according to a study by the University of Warwick in the UK, employees who are happy at work are 12% more productive. Including indicators on job satisfaction in the productivity measure will allow this to be properly assessed and thus enable improvement measures to be taken.
In relation to pension systems based on the pay-as-you-go model, where workers' contributions finance the pensions of retirees, increases in productivity will lead to an increase in the system's revenues. Moreover, since pensions are calculated on the basis of lifetime wages, higher productivity means higher pensions.
- Where are we burning resources to make productivity statistics perform so poorly?
Measurement of any variable is essential; but it has to be done well. Both in terms of what it measures and how it is disaggregated. In this way, measures can be analysed to improve what is being measured.
In the case of productivity, the more we explore it and the more we analyse the causal relationships of the explanatory variables, the better we will be able to measure it and use the results obtained from this measurement.
- Is it possible to envisage the emergence of jobs that are full, flexible, not onerous on health, vocational, paid and fun for everyone?
At the present time I sincerely believe that anything is possible. Everything is as possible as teleworking has been for almost two years; what in 2019 we only saw as science fiction. These days the debate is starting in the European Parliament on the four-day working day; therefore it is clear that everything is possible.
There is a consensus that the jobs of the future are going to be very different from the jobs of today; I would go so far as to say that this is already happening with the jobs of today. Times change and in recent years these changes have been more continuous and rapid than ever before. This brings with it a change in the way training has to be understood. In my opinion this training has to be continuous and permanent and not limited to the training received during the university or school period. Moreover, training must be specific, without a doubt, but also multidisciplinary in order to obtain competences that allow students and workers to adapt better to changing situations, which at present we are not even able to foresee.
Another aspect to be mentioned is the change in the age structure of the population. According to INE data, in Spain in 2020 the population aged between 16 and 64 will account for 64.8% of the population, with 19.6% over 64 years of age. However, in 2050, the population aged over 64 will account for 31.4% of the total and those aged between 16 and 64 for 55.2%. The jobs that this group will have will undoubtedly be closely related to the needs of the over-64s.
Surely never in the last seven decades has there been as much job dissatisfaction as there is today. And the big question is, why have we let this happen?
Major macroeconomic trends are difficult to foresee and once their effects are known the basis for changing them is complex. There is no doubt that they can deepen, so it would be appropriate to proceed with compensatory measures, both regulatory and transfer measures, to avoid a deepening of these costs.
- Are we measuring productivity well?
I don't think we ever have. I mean, it is very complex to measure something that is even difficult to observe. That is why it is always doubtful whether it is being done properly. And even more so at a time when we do not know if we are capable of measuring other variables about which we did not previously have so many doubts, such as GDP and even working hours, determinants that provide a posteriori productivity.
The precariousness of work due to efficiency-based economic models with no social vision, hiring by the job, by the hour or by project; they do not link people to lasting work and life plans, we are witnessing the era of temporary precariousness. On the other hand, technologies have not fulfilled the promise of improving communications and productivity, sometimes it seems that we work for technology and not technology to improve human life and work.
The appeal of the project in general is very appealing to me and this particular article caught my attention with the issue of the "end of work. And while I share the conceptual framework and the historical analysis of industrial relations in the developed world, I was puzzled by the proposal for reader participation on how we are measuring productivity. I was puzzled by the proposal for reader participation on how we are measuring productivity. And I say perplexed in good faith. Because it seems more like a question to statistical specialists than to the general public, as I had assumed. I say this because my contribution to the colloquium is nil. But I believe that initiatives of this type are necessary given the absolute waste of energy of so many thousands of retired people with 20 or 30 years of age on our part as individuals and the social ostracism to which we are condemned. Without any acrimony, I send you this reflection even if it is not very productive.
It is important and necessary to continue to evaluate this issue, especially in the specialised labour sectors, in order to classify them in the future, without taking into account labour policy bases that affect the development of future work and modern work in all fields of labour development, in order to take into account improvements in all fields, This analysis will help to improve the quality of ageing in the future, as it is the mental activity and work activity that will keep people young, regardless of their age, education and specialisation.
In countries like Peru, the compensation and pension system needs to be updated; there are retirees with more than 40 years of contributions who receive a pittance.
Formo parte de una minoría, aún menor en España, de mayores de 50 años con un grado variable de enfermedad y/o discapacidad, pero que aún no sufren dependencia, cuya vocación no es envejecer en un lugar a la espera de llegar a una “máxima incapacidad de movimientos o enfermedades graves”. Nuestra aspiración es la de atrincherarnos para aprovechar los avances en la Ciencia y la Tecnología, y con ellos resistirnos activamente al Envejecimiento y a sus Enfermedades Asociadas, e incluso Rejuvenecer Activamente. Queremos Alternativas para residir en lugares lo más adecuados posibles para ayudarnos a Extender nuestra Esperanza de Vida Independiente lo más posible.
Me parece horroroso buscar soluciones para el momento en el que necesitemos cuidados de enfermería en forma de cambio de pañales, colchones anti escaras y cosas peores. Todo diseño o planificación debe tender a retrasar o evitar ese momento de máxima dependencia para el máximo número de personas. Que una parte cada vez mayor de la población llegué a ese punto de Dependencia es un fracaso monumental. Las alternativas de vivienda no deben ir dirigidas a “aparcar mejor” a los mayores Dependientes, lo que tienen es que contribuir a que los Mayores vivan la mayor parte de su cada vez más larga vida, de forma Independiente.