David Autor on future of work trends following his presentation to the APPG

Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke at the December 2020 meeting of the APPG. Here, he asks: if the Covid-19 pandemic has ended the longest period of economic growth and caused a flood of job losses across the world, what should policy-makers do now?

Before the COVID-19crisis, the industrialised world was undergoing rapid employment growth, so much so that The Economist declared in May 2019 that“most of the rich world is enjoying a jobs boom of unprecedented scope”. Despite these encouraging trends, a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2018 found that majorities of citizens in advanced and emerging economies anticipated that robots and computers would “probably or definitely” take over many jobs, exacerbating inequality, and making work harder to find.