sudinfo (05.08.2017) Dans l’esprit du grand public, la Sécurité sociale est trop souvent associée à une image abîmée et négative. La nouvelle plateforme « Prenons soin de nous » veut en finir avec ça

iloblog.org (30.07.2017) During an economic crisis, Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) are one way that governments can use to protect vulnerable people from falling into poverty.

The Chronicle (28.07.2017) The Zimbabwe Electricity Industry Pension Fund (ZEIPF) is targeting investing in infrastructure projects in small towns across the country.

markets.businessinsider (08.08.2017) The construction industry has had one year to become compliant with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) respirable crystalline silica regulations. That compliance deadline has been extended from June 23, 2017, until September 23, 2017, to provide guidance and education to employers and at-risk workers regarding the dangers of exposure to airborne silica dust in the workplace.

swissinfo (05.08.2017) Die Überalterung der Bevölkerung, weniger Wirtschaftswachstum und tiefe Zinsen bedrohen die Renten in der Schweiz. Nach zahlreichen gescheiterten Versuchen schlagen nun Regierung und Parlamentsmehrheit eine umfassende Reform der Altersvorsorge vor. Ziel: die Sicherung der Finanzierung bis 2030. Hier die wichtigsten Punkte der Altersvorsorge 2020, die im September vors Volk kommt.

DNA India (25.07.2017) As per the data, over 132 workers under the Factories Act, 1948, and nine workers under the Mines Act, 1952 were affected in the last three years

The Guardian (10.08.2017) Charity’s research predicts 575,000 people in Britain will have no roof over their heads unless government takes urgent action

How many people are in the gig economy? We’re very interested in this question at Nation1099, and, as it happens, it isn’t an easy question to find answers to, especially since the gig economy is growing and changing very fast and people mean many different things by the term. Employment in general is undergoing dramatic changes, often summarized as “the future of work” or Workforce 2.0. Anyone following workforce trends will have seen eye-popping numbers about the gig economy along the lines of “one third of all workers are freelancers” or “half of us will be in the gig economy by 2020.” But these statistics, which we will review in detail below, use broad definitions of the gig economy. They often lump together strategy consultants, freelance designers, musicians, drivers for ride-sharing apps, day laborers and people who work for temp agencies.

Brazil Learning Initiative for a World without Poverty (WWP) ( 18.07.2017)  Data on some 27 million Brazilian families are retained in a single registry - the Unified Registry for Social Programs (CadÚnico) - a useful tool for identifying and describing the socioeconomic conditions of low-income families.

Swiss Re Institute (07.07.2017) We live in a world with increasingly uncertain health outcomes. Individuals from developed economies have been living longer for many decades. However, those gains are beginning to be reversed in some countries, particularly within certain communities. Sensor technology is increasingly being deployed to counter these trends. The computational biology platform LifeQ offers its clients effective outcomes based on intervention and engagement in individuals' health; dynamic health assessment; cost saving and fair pricing; and early disease prediction.

Les récents progrès de ces technologies posent, dès à présent, des questions moins spectaculaires, mais bien plus concrètes. Par MORGANE TUAL Temps de lecture : 9 min « Je n’arrête pas de tirer la sonnette d’alarme, mais tant que les gens ne verront pas des robots descendre dans la rue pour tuer tout le monde, ils ne sauront pas comment réagir. » Ces propos inquiétants sont signés Elon Musk, le patron de Tesla et de Space X, et grand adepte des coups médiatiques.

Une phrase qui a déclenché, le 24 juillet, un échange cinglant avec le patron de Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, qui a qualifié ses propos d’« irresponsables », et a vanté les avancées que promettait l’intelligence artificielle (IA) dans le domaine de la santé ou de la sécurité routière. « J’ai discuté avec Mark [Zuckerberg] de tout cela, a répondu publiquement Elon Musk sur Twitter. Sa compréhension du sujet est limitée. »

McKinsey Global Institute (31.05.2017) Automation, digital platforms, and other innovations are changing the fundamental nature of work. Understanding these shifts can help policy makers, business leaders, and workers move forward. The world of work is in a state of flux, which is causing considerable anxiety—and with good reason. There is growing polarization of labor-market opportunities between high- and low-skill jobs, unemployment and underemployment especially among young people, stagnating incomes for a large proportion of households, and income inequality. Migration and its effects on jobs has become a sensitive political issue in many advanced economies. And from Mumbai to Manchester, public debate rages about the future of work and whether there will be enough jobs to gainfully employ everyone.

What will the workforce of the future look like, and how can we accelerate the transformation of institutions, organizations, and human skills to keep up with the quickening pace of digital innovation?  Understanding the future of the workforce in a rapidly changing global economy The IDE helps businesses understand how the digital economy will improve job creation and wage equality in the years to come. Our research also seeks to create a better method of measuring the health of an economy in the context of the digital age.

Can a universal basic income resolve future income security challenges? Universal basic income approaches are currently high on the agenda as possible policy options to resolve the income security challenges that emerge on the one hand from new forms of work in the wake of digitalization and automation, as well as from informal and precarious employment. 

JPMorgan Chase Institute. February 2016

Paychecks, Paydays, and the Online Platform Economy .  Americans experience tremendous income volatility, and that volatility is on the rise. Income volatility matters because it is hard to manage. The typical household faces a shortfall in the financial buffer necessary to weather this volatility. Moreover, the decline in real wages since 2009 for all income groups except the top 5th percentile means that life is harder to afford in general, but even more so when earnings dip below average. Rapidly growing online platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb, have created a new marketplace for work by unbundling a job into discrete tasks and directly connecting individual sellers with consumers. These flexible, highly accessible opportunities to work have the potential to help people buffer against income and expense shocks. The “Online Platform Economy” offers fewer worker protections than traditional work arrangements, however, which has led some to claim that the Online Platform Economy represents a fundamental shift in the nature of work.

How can you get started as a freelancer when the path in your country is unclear? In a series of posts, we’ve invited freelancers from around the world to share tips and best practices they’ve learned along the way. In this post, Leo Brambilla talks about his experience as an Argentinian freelancer. Please note that this article presents general information provided by a freelancer and does not constitute tax or legal advice. It’s a good idea for every freelancer to speak to a personal advisor to determine the requirements and options for your particular situation. “Freelancing in Argentina is still pretty new, and mostly for people who work in IT—maybe for designers, too. But it isn’t very common,” said Leo Brambilla, a software engineer who’s been working on Upwork’s Team app since early 2015. “It isn’t an option if you’re just starting in your profession; there are opportunities, but you need to be close to them to see them.”

Editor’s note: This essay is part of a series being published to help commemorate the Monthly Labor Review’s centennial (July 1915–July 2015). The essays―written by eminent authorities and distinguished experts in a broad range of fields―cover a variety of topics pertinent to the Review and the work of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each essay is unique and comprises the words and opinion of the author. We’ve found these essays to be enlightening and inspirational. We hope you do as well. We’re entering a new era. For much of the past century, the 9-to-5 job has defined what most Americans think of as “work.” But that is changing—fast. More than 53 million Americans are now earning income from work that’s not a traditional 9-to-5. That’s 1 in 3 workers. We are still at the leading edge of a once-in-a-century upheaval in our workforce. The freelance surge is the Industrial Revolution of our time. The surge in freelancing is more than two decades old at this point. When I founded Freelancers Union in 1995, the term “freelancer” was still new and not well understood. Whether by choice or by circumstance, millions of workers in the intervening years have started working gig to gig, project to project.

forrester.com (03.04.2017) Forrester released an update to its Future Of Jobs research, which predicts how robots, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) will impact the workforce over the next 10 years. While automation and related technologies will inevitably displace some of the workforce, Forrester argues that the technology will transform the workforce by adding new jobs or changing existing jobs, rather than completely displacing workers.

Global Credit Research - 17 May 2017 New York, May 17, 2017 -- The accelerating adoption of robotics in manufacturing in some of the worlds' more advanced economies could pose challenges to emerging market exporters that have benefited from their comparative advantage of lower cost, high skilled labor, says Moody's Investors Service in a report.

The US (Aaa stable), Germany (Aaa stable), Japan (A1 stable), Korea (Aa2 stable) and China (Aa3 negative) account for about 75% of spending on global industrial robotics worldwide. In these five countries, the use of robotics could even bring back some of the processes that have been offshored to lower labor cost destinations.

Nonetheless, the number of jobs lost to automation is likely to be higher than those gained by onshoring. Another impact of robotics is that it could offset labor market pressures in countries with aging populations. "In countries where aging populations are reducing the growth in labor supply, robotics could support growth by lowering the need for labor while also increasing productivity," said Samar Maziad, a Senior Analyst and Vice President at Moody's.

Robotics technology is most commonly used in the highly globalized automotive and electronics industries, and the five main nations that are adopting it are also key trade nodes in their respective regions. This implies that while the adoption of robotics is currently concentrated in only a few countries, it will have implications beyond their borders. In particular, the countries that are linked to them through trade and manufacturing supply chains will be impacted.

These include emerging markets economies, such as Czech Republic (A1 stable), Hungary (Baa3 stable), and Slovenia (Baa3 positive) in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Malaysia (A3 stable) and Thailand (Baa1 stable) in Asia. These nations are deeply integrated into high technology production chains and export markets due to their comparative advantage of high-skilled, lower cost labor forces. As automation becomes more efficient and cost effective, it could negate the labor cost advantage of some of these emerging markets.

Global Credit Research (17.05.2017)  The accelerating adoption of robotics in manufacturing in some of the worlds' more advanced economies could pose challenges to emerging market exporters that have benefited from their comparative advantage of lower cost, high skilled labor, says Moody's Investors Service in a report.

As artificial intelligence takes hold, what will it take to be an effective executive? In a 1967 McKinsey Quarterly article, “The manager and the moron,” Peter Drucker noted that “the computer makes no decisions; it only carries out orders. It’s a total moron, and therein lies its strength. It forces us to think, to set the criteria. The stupider the tool, the brighter the master has to be—and this is the dumbest tool we have ever had.”1

New forms of non-standard work in the online platform economy are creating a growing gap between digital innovation and decent work, which by definition includes fair wages, social protection and the right to bargain collectively. While estimates on the growth of on-demand and crowd work vary widely, a mid-term rise in labour market polarization and atypical work might arise. But it is also preventable. So, what can be done practically for online platforms to be a driver of quality jobs? 

Moderator: Sarah O’Conner, Correspondent, Financial Times

Kick-off Presentation: Valerio De Stefano, Labour Law Officer, ILO 

- Pascal Pavageau, Confederal Secretary, FO 
- Six Silberman, Project Secretary, IG Metall and Programmer, 
Turkopticon 
- Saadia Zahidi, Senior Director and Head of Gender Parity and 
Human Capital at the World Economic Forum (WEF)
- Jan Drahokoupil, Senior researcher, ETUI 
- Fredrik Söderqvist, Economist, Unionen