The digital era: risks and opportunities for employment and job security

Purpose: The purpose of the Chapter is to discuss the effects of the technological change due to digitalization, automation and robotization on employment and workers’ rights. Approach: The Chapter starts from describing how the macroeconomic research has dealt with the empirical features of the technological progress, the resulting consensus on the theoretical side and its normative implications. However, the new technological paradigm related to ICT services and the Fourth Industrial Revolution brought new modes of production for firms and discrepancies within the job market that deserve a restatement of both the nodes in the debate of the economic research and the regulation that preserves workers’ rights and promotes digital education. Findings: The Chapter summarizes the main institutional steps ahead about the latter with a focus on the European experience. In the light of the new challenge that the Covid-19 has raised to the European society, is what has been done enough? The Chapter envisages an answer to this question: in the face of a possible long-run scenario, the pandemic may represent an opportunity for European institutions to favouring the completion of the ICT paradigms through a coordinated public program. Practical & Social implications. Policy decisions which are urgently needed to allow digitalization, automation and artificial intelligence to assist humans in being more productive, and to achieve safer and healthier workplaces. At the same time, policies need to be more resilient to the impact of future technological innovations on the labor market.