Explore the future of work in Europe
Technology and structural shifts in the economy are reshaping the workplace and will continue to do so after the COVID-19 crisis abates. What does this look like across Europe today? And what will be the result as these trends continue over the next decade? Explore the data to gain a perspective for the continent as a whole—or go deeper for a close-up view that spans almost 1,100 local labor markets.
How do local labor markets differ across Europe?
Europe is a patchwork of local labor markets with striking variations in sector mix, workforce skills, innovation capabilities, and business dynamism. We used a mathematical clustering technique to group almost 1,100 local economies across Europe into 13 clusters. These clusters fall into three broad categories.
Forty-eight dynamic cities, including Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Munich, and Paris, are home to 20 percent of Europe’s population. They account for more than half of its high-tech patents, three-quarters of its startups, and 83 percent of its STEM graduates.
By contrast, 438 shrinking regions with 30 percent of the population, mostly in Eastern and Southern Europe, have declining workforces, older populations, and lower educational attainment. The remaining half of Europe’s population lives in a wide range of largely stable economies.
What are the recent patterns of job growth across Europe?
Growth has become geographically concentrated in recent years. Since 2007, just 48 dynamic cities have generated 35 percent of Europe’s net job growth, 42 percent of its GDP growth, and 40 percent of its population growth. During the same period, job growth has been modest in stable economies, and stagnant or even negative in shrinking regions.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, employment rates rose in 85 percent of local economies across the continent as the workforce shrank.
Disparities between clusters are widening, with just 48 dynamic growth hubs generating more than one-third of Europe’s job growth since 2007.
How will European workers be affected by automation?
More than half of Europe’s workforce can expect signicant change.
Work activities equivalent to about 53 million jobs could potentially be displaced by automation. There is some overlap between these jobs at risk from automation and those at risk in the short term from the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
Many of the largest occupational categories in Europe today have the highest potential for displacement. About 21 million workers, most of whom lack tertiary education, may need to change occupations by 2030.
At the same time, we see a continuing rise in demand for workers in technology, science, and engineering fields as well as business and legal professionals. Human workers will also increasingly concentrate in roles that require personal interaction, caregiving, teaching and training, and managing others—activities for which machines are not good substitutes.
Millions of Europeans will need to transition from declining to growing occupations.
Total gross jobs change by 2030 (summing all regions), changing ISCO2 occupation groups only, millions
How might Europe’s geography of job growth evolve by 2030?
Automation could intensify regional concentration in the years to come.
The 48 dynamic cities that outperformed in the past decade could capture more than 50 percent of Europe’s potential job growth in the next.
Meanwhile, stable economies should continue to add jobs at a modest pace, just as they did in the past decade. Within the shrinking regions category, the outcomes could range from small increases to negative growth. Around 40 percent of Europe’s population lives in regions that could have fewer jobs in 2030 than they do today in absolute terms. However, even places facing job losses will need to boost employment to compensate as aging and outmigration shrink the working-age population.
Potential net job growth by 2030 in midpoint automation scenario, %
What are the priorities for employers?
Employers will need to make adept decisions about strategy, skills, and social responsibility. Companies may need to respond as consumer purchasing power shifts. To address the need for new types of skills, they may need to change recruiting processes, establish learning programs, and redesign organizational structures. Their choices have to reflect the skills, occupational mix, and geographic footprint of their workforces today. A retail chain with a distributed customer-facing workforce, for example, faces different questions than a geographically concentrated tech firm. Employers will also need to consider how their workforce decisions affect the communities in which they operate.
Based on the characteristics of their workforces, most European employers fit into nine categories, with different challenges and choices.
What are the priorities for local communities?
Each community has its own current and future priorities to overcome labor market mismatches. But four broad imperatives stand out: creating viable training and career pathways to address skills shortages, improving access to jobs in dynamic growth hubs, revitalizing and supporting shrinking labor markets, and increasing labor participation rates.