Opinion – Michael França: For many, the future of work is not promising

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During some periods of Brazilian history, there were intense migratory flows from Northeasterners. They abandoned their lands and went to other regions of the country with the expectation of improving their living conditions. Many had low qualifications and, therefore, represented a cheap labor that was used to supply the demand of the most varied manual services. Through significant effort, some managed to prosper.

This way of ascending socially is more difficult in the contemporary scenario. The unemployment rate is high in several countries around the world and it hits hard on low-educated workers and youth. There are numerous challenges to getting work. Even those who are employed tend to struggle to ensure a decent standard of living for their families.

At the same time, the world of work is rapidly changing. After World War II, technological advances helped workers to become more productive. Consequently, they began to enjoy the greater income that was generated by economic growth.

However, the Golden Age of Capitalism was short-lived. After a few years, many were left behind. Technological progress has intensified and reconfigured the way we work. In order to meet the new demands of the market, a continuous and high investment in people training became necessary.

The education system of several countries has not been able to keep up with the changes. Many occupations began to have a considerable gap between the skills needed to perform well and those that individuals possess. As a result, technology began to play a relevant role in increasing inequality. Recent economic research has pointed in this direction.

In one of them, Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo documented that, in the last four decades, there have been wage declines for workers specialized in routine tasks in industries that have had rapid automation. In turn, this explains a significant portion of the changes in the US wage structure (Tasks, Automation, and the Rise in US Wage Inequality, 2022).

In Brazil, in an article published in Quatro Cinco Um magazine, Leonardo Monasterio and Willian Adamczyk revisited the literature and found that specialized studies on the subject indicate that between 45% and 60% of the workforce in the formal sector perform activities that can be automated. in the future (High-tech unemployment, 2022).

Thus, the current challenge in this agenda is to think of the best solutions to guarantee the productive inclusion of many workers who, soon, may be discarded by the market. One of the possibilities is to help individuals who will be out of work in the coming years to develop new skills. To this end, there are several training programs offered by governments and NGOs.

However, most of them have not yet been evaluated and, therefore, although they are generally expensive, their results remain unknown. Furthermore, it is known that the success of a program in a given context does not imply that it will have the same effect in another.

Despite the various initiatives to offer good answers to the challenges of employment, there is still a lot we need to learn to better design public policies and help managers in more promising directions.

Great focus has been given in developed countries to understand the future of work and the possible impacts of automation. However, the same cannot be said for the rest of the world. In low- and middle-income countries, relatively little attention is still given to understanding the effects of a process that is already reshaping the way we live.

The text represents a tribute to the song “Zé Brasileiro”, by Candeia and Rappin Hood.

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