REPORT

OVERVIEW













This Report Overview builds on work undertaken with the support of The Rockefeller
Foundation, but in itself represents the work of Foresight Alliance LLC and should not be
construed as representing the views or ideas of The Rockefeller Foundation.

The Futures of Work: Report Overview
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 THE FUTURES OF WORK
REPORT OVERVIEW

The future of work is uncertain; powerful driving forces are changing the world of work, and
there are a variety of ways in which the global futures of work may unfold. Understanding these
possible futures is essential if individuals are to be equipped to develop and maintain secure
livelihoods. In particular, coming changes will especially affect poor and otherwise vulnerable
populations, who are often overlooked in discussions of this topic.
The Futures of Work project aims to provide a synthesis and evaluation of current thought
about the future of work over the next 15 to 20 years, with an emphasis on Africa, Asia, and the
United States and special focus on the poor and vulnerable. This project combined extensive
secondary research, primary research in the form of interviews with about 30 experts in the
regions of interest, and careful foresight analysis to identify explicit and implicit futures for
various aspects of work.
The report addresses four important aspects of the future of work—flexible work, automation
of work, work in developing economies, and potentially transformative new structures that
could replace today’s work paradigms and practices.
In a year-long research endeavor, the Foresight Alliance
Key findings: Coming disruption team identified and summarized prominent current
• The next two decades will see scenarios or forecasts and explored the resulting issues and
substantial workforce implications—a meta-review and analysis that, to our
displacements and disruptions. knowledge, had not previously been undertaken in this
• Present trends portend a field and which offers a fresh contribution to the global
(possibly temporary) shortage discussion about work.
of high-skilled workers and a
surplus of low-skilled ones. The Futures of Work is intended to help the philanthropic
and development communities understand the challenges
• Vulnerable populations are at
risk of bearing the worst of the that poor and vulnerable workers may meet going forward,
coming workplace turmoil. and to help them identify emerging opportunities to
• Additional classes of workers address those challenges. In addition, the public and
may fall into vulnerable private sectors may find the report useful for stimulating
situations as a result of these thinking and discussion about evolving workforces and
large-scale changes. effective strategies, policies, and programs to equip
• The freelance economy will individuals to attain secure livelihoods.
provide opportunities for
some vulnerable individuals
but disadvantage others.
Flexible work
• Displaced workers could Strong economic forces—aided and abetted by new
ultimately adopt other forms technologies—are creating change in the workplace,
of value creation, redefining especially in higher-income countries. Foremost, employers
work. are opting for more flexible work arrangements including

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part-time work, contingent work, contract work, and freelance work. Workforce flexibility can
offer employers lower labor costs and more rapid response to changing marketplace demands.
These trends may offer some workers the opportunity to work when, where, and as much as
they want—but for others they will make livelihoods less secure.
• Scenarios. Possible futures associated with flexible work include “take it or leave it”
employment terms, digital discrimination by workforce analytics, and growth of a freelance
economy that provides work but not jobs—making livelihoods significantly more precarious.
Workers in lower-income countries who have appropriate skills will be able to compete with
workers in higher-income countries for freelance work.
Collectively, the scenarios point to an increasingly Driving forces
bifurcated workforce, with sharply divergent outcomes for Powerful driving forces will shape
unskilled and skilled workers. the futures of work.
• Issues. The shift toward flexible work arrangements raises
• Social. Inequality, poverty,
issues including the balance of power between workers
skills gaps, women’s
and employers, the supply of and demand for skilled empowerment
workers, how workers will acquire technical and relational
• Demographic. Aging, middle-
skills needed for job searching and workplace success, the class growth, urbanization,
future of fair labor standards, and equitable use of the youth bulge
reputation systems that evaluate both workers and • Economic. Complex
employers. Workers will need new ways to exercise manufacturing economics,
influence collectively. Employment safety nets will have to drive for efficiency,
be modified to be effective in this new environment. globalization, productivity
• Benefits and risks for the poor and vulnerable. Potential • Technological. Automation,
benefits of flexible work for the poor and vulnerable ubiquitous connectivity, big
include new routes of access to work, experience, and data, datafication and sensing,
training; search and hiring software that could overcome emerging-market tech and
bias and neglect; and the potential to formalize informal innovation, HR analytics,
machine learning, Moore’s law
freelance work. But these opportunities may well be
outweighed by new risks to secure livelihoods—including
increased global competition for work, a race to the bottom in wages and working
conditions, software hiring biases, and new structural barriers to employment. Education
and training will become more the responsibility of the worker, more skill-and-experience-
focused than degree-focused, and lifelong rather than a distinct life stage.

Automation
The second group of forces reshaping work is technological: machine intelligence, ubiquitous
connectivity, and advanced robotics are enabling automation of routine rule-based work,
including both physical and cognitive work.
• Scenarios. Possible futures driven by automation include an optimistic scenario, in which
humans and machines work together productively and automation leads to innovation that
generates new industries and new jobs; and a pessimistic scenario, in which jobs are broken

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down into discrete tasks so that as many as possible can be automated, wages fall, and the
need for human labor undergoes long-term reduction.
• Issues. The continuing growth of automation raises important questions. How far into
higher-skilled jobs—especially knowledge work—will automation penetrate? To what
extent will automation compete with, complement, or cooperate with human workers?
How will workers acquire the new skills they need to work
productively with automated technology? Will workers Automating knowledge work

who are displaced find secure new livelihoods, or will newly
created jobs mainly benefit rising generations of workers?
Pro-work policies (in contrast to minimum wage laws) may
be required to shore up employment.
• Benefits and risks for the poor and vulnerable. In the long
term, it is possible that nearly half of current jobs may be
automated—and these will tend to be tedious, repetitive,
and low-paid jobs. Displaced workers have the potential to
be redirected into other forms of value creation, providing According to McKinsey &
Company, “By 2025, many of the
opportunities for more meaningful and rewarding work.
tasks performed by a typical
Social benefits could be generated by a more productive knowledge worker will become
economy and from synergies between humans and automatable… The content and
machines. But in the short to medium term, automation scope of work of 110 million to
will likely make more workers vulnerable, substantially 140 million knowledge workers
1
increase job churn, require new skills that could be beyond around the world may change.”
the reach of the poor and vulnerable, and potentially shift Image: Neil Conway (Flickr)
some workers to lower-skilled, lower-wage jobs.

Emerging work in lower-income countries

Shifts in the global economy, demography, technology, and business structures are reshaping
work in lower-income nations as well.
• Scenarios. For rural workers, important changes include an older, more female workforce;
the spread of IT services and applications; and, in some areas, the spread of agribusiness.
The most likely future is one in which rural workers diverge along three paths: those who
become increasingly business-like, those who continue to struggle at a subsistence level,
and those who transition to the non-farm economy or mix farm work with non-farm work.2
Automation will shrink the number of workers in manufacturing, while globalization and
technology make the location of manufacturing centers fluid. The informal economy is likely
to persist for the foreseeable future and be fought, tolerated, or even embraced by
economic and political institutions. In summary, many vulnerable populations will face
substantial challenges in gaining work that provides a secure livelihood.
• Issues. These scenarios raise many important questions. Will smallhold farming endure, and
in what form? How can information technology (IT) best support secure livelihoods in
developing economies? How can non-agricultural livelihoods be established outside urban
areas? Is worker migration to urban areas a positive or negative outcome? What is the

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 The Futures of Work Report Overview

balance between supporting workers in the informal
economy and helping workers and employers transition
A shift away from salaried work
from the informal to the formal economy? How can
workers act collectively to secure rights and social support?
How can interventions be tailored to local contexts and the
aspirations of individual workers?
• Benefits and risks for the poor and vulnerable. For rural
workers in lower-income countries, more secure livelihoods
could be enabled by IT interventions, by positive changes
triggered by an increasingly female rural workforce, and by According to the ILO, “Today, wage
inclusive models for agribusiness. For many poor and and salaried employment accounts
vulnerable workers, embracing the informal economy as a for only about half of global
potentially positive force could make social protections employment and covers as few as
more widely available while reducing the stigma associated 20 percent of workers in regions
with informal work. But there are also significant threats. such as sub-Saharan Africa and
South Asia… Fewer than
Conventional agribusiness models could continue to push
45 percent of wage and salaried
rural workers aside. Manufacturing will no longer provide workers are employed on a full-
the path to secure livelihoods that it once offered to time, permanent basis and even
workers in developing economies. Persistence of the that share appears to be
informal economy will hinder the growth of economies, declining.”3
jobs, and especially job quality. Image: DFID—UK Department for
International Development

Transforming work
Automation, the drive for workforce efficiency, and the economics of global trade augur
profound changes for the world of work, changes that make secure livelihoods more difficult to
achieve for the poor and vulnerable in both lower-income and higher-income economies. While
policy responses that rely on existing tools (such as worker retraining and minimum wage
adjustments) can have some positive effect, more transformative structural changes will likely
be required.
• Scenarios. Policymakers are considering a variety of ways to create a more inclusive
economy. Normative scenarios include restructuring jobs (e.g., by reducing the workweek),
restoring the link between economic growth and worker income, and decentralizing
production and distribution. Eventually, automation and other technology developments
could create an abundance economy—a society in which sufficient incomes are detached
from job status. In such a society jobs would not be a central organizing principle of life, and
everyone could receive a minimum income that meets basic needs. But the transition to
such a society would be very challenging, and abundance itself could cause social problems.
• Issues. The transition to a more inclusive economy—and ultimately to an abundance
society—would require profound changes to economic and social structures. For example,
government revenue might shift from income taxes to production and consumption taxes.
New models for the fair distribution—or redistribution—of work, income, capital, and the
means of production would be required. For example, how will the growing population of

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post-work seniors be supported? When working for pay is no longer a useful measure of
self-worth, what will take its place? Wealth may be redistributed, but there is no system for
redistributing the emotional benefits of work.
• Benefits and risks for the poor and vulnerable. Inclusive and abundance economies appear
to represent, almost by definition, a desirable outcome for the poor and vulnerable. But
there are significant risks. First, the transition period to a new equilibrium could be rocky.
The path involves gradual elimination of jobs, and low-income workers could be the first to
go. The transition to an abundance economy might be even more daunting in lower-income
countries, where job loss could set in before adequate prosperity is achieved. Second, there
is significant risk that economies may fail to reach these lofty goals: which specific policies
and structural changes are needed is already a subject of considerable debate. Finally, an
inclusive or abundance economy could still pose risks to the vulnerable. For example, a
universal income could become an excuse to neglect other sorts of support required by
needy populations.

Overarching themes
Taken together, these scenarios reveal some important themes and crucial considerations.
• The next two decades will see significant workforce displacements and disruptions.
Forecasts for automation, flexible work, and the informal economy augur substantial
workforce displacements over the next 20 years. The impacts will fall disproportionately on
the poor and vulnerable, but the resulting turmoil could
also spur renewed emphasis on social support systems Changes ahead
and on education and training. According to Nobel prizewinning
• Present trends portend a shortage of high-skilled economist Michael Spence, “It is
workers and a surplus of low-skilled workers. Present- possible that we are entering a
trends-continue forecasts suggest there will be a global period in which major adaptations
shortage of highly skilled workers and a glut of low-skill in employment models,
workweeks, contract labor,
workers in the near term, though this shortage may be minimum wages, and the delivery
temporary. of essential public services will be
• Worker glut could offer a social opportunity. In the long needed in order to maintain social
run, automation could free up a substantial fraction of the cohesion and uphold the core
workforce—a resource that could be redirected into new values of equity and
forms of value creation. intergenerational mobility.”4
• Access to interventions is key. Access is an essential—if
obvious—consideration for successful interventions to
empower those who are most vulnerable to the coming changes. Access to interventions
includes physical access, financial access, freedom to participate, and awareness of
opportunities.
• Education can be tailored to vulnerable populations. Flexible, focused, just-in-time
education designed to meet open job needs will significantly benefit vulnerable
populations.

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• New technology and organizations could strengthen the collective voice of workers. The
atomizing effect of flexible work arrangements will make it more difficult for workers,
especially the poor and vulnerable, to express a collective voice. Crowdsourced and
networked organizations could offer new solutions.
• The focus of change may shift from large institutions to The foresight point of view
smaller ones. In coming decades, solutions to the needs Foresight practitioners (futurists)
of workers may well arise from smaller, entrepreneurial, look for weak signals of impending
and decentralized movements—though these solutions change, envision possibilities and
may at times have global reach and benefit from global potential results, and seek to
networks and solutions. understand broad, holistic
• There are many ways developed and developing outcomes. This report attempts to
bring economic, political, societal,
economies can learn from one another. This is especially
and technological perspectives
true in the areas of flexible and informal work and lifelong together to develop a common
learning, where developing nations may be able to understanding of possible futures.
“leapfrog” to more effective solutions. In many cases the report presents
• Flexible institutions will be needed to respond to several potential outcomes, some
changes in the world of work. Institutions that respond to of which contradict one another—
the needs of workers, employers, and society—legal and there are many possible routes to
the future.
educational systems, social protection programs, and so
forth—will need to be as flexible as the world of work
itself.
In light of all the very real, daunting obstacles and challenges facing vulnerable workers, there is
a need for positive visions for the future of work. Understanding possible futures is a crucial
step for those who want to develop interventions that will be robust and effective under a wide
variety of possible future circumstances.

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References

1
Milov, Grigory. “Smart Computers, Skilled Robots, Redundant People,” McKinsey & Company, May 28,
2013,
www.mckinsey.com/global_locations/europe_and_middleeast/russia/en/latest_thinking/smart_comp
uters.
2
Hazell, Peter B. R. and Atiqur Rahman. New Directions for Smallholder Agriculture, Oxford University
Press, 2014.
3
“World Employment Social Outlook,” International Labor Organization, May 2015,
www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---
publ/documents/publication/wcms_368626.pdf.
4
Spence, Michael. “Technology and the Employment Challenge,” World Economic Forum blog, January
15, 2013, http://forumblog.org/2013/01/technology-and-the-employment-challenge.

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