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Beyond 4.0 is a Horizon 2020 project examining the future of work and welfare in Europe.

Chris Warhurst of IER and Steve Dhondt of the Dutch innovation organisation TNO have just published a outlining the opportunities and challenges with Industrie 4.0 as part of the project.

Terence Hogarth (as part of the FGB/EY team investigating skill needs in the automotive sector for the European Commission) moderated the 'Skills and Transformation of the EU Automotive Sector'  held on 27th May 2020.

The webinar was convened on behalf of the European Commission to report on its sector blueprint studies looking at the automotive sector’s skill needs and how they might be met. The webinar will be followed by a high level conference, planned for 23 September 2020, to explore the sector’s skill needs in greater depth.

In June, Chris Warhurst contributed to Warwick’s new Global Research Priorities (GRP) group’s debate on Productivity and the Futures of Work with a webinar on ‘The shape of employment to come’. It includes a 7-point plan for employment in a new UK industrial strategy.

GRPs are interdisciplinary research groupings intended to respond to complex multi-faceted global problems through collaborative research excellence.

The recorded presentation can be found here and a blog post on this topic here.

New labour market data released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the small rise in unemployment recorded in May has held. Unemployment has not yet risen because of the furloughing scheme. However, the collapse in job vacancies is being taken as a marker of the massive unemployment to come. The aggregate vacancy data masks some significant variations by occupation. Experimental data analysis by the Warwick Institute for Employment Research (IER) reveals falling and increasing demand for different jobs in the UK labour market.

After only a few months, the global Coronavirus pandemic has affected workers worldwide in a profound way. Strict social distancing and lockdown measures around the world have halted daily activities, presenting a threat to the livelihoods of billions of workers who rely on their daily earnings in the informal sector.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that almost 1.6 billion informal workers or nearly half of the global workforce are significantly affected by pandemic measures. In Indonesia, 55% of the workforce or around 70 million people work in the informal sector. Unregistered, unregulated and unprotected by secure employment contracts and social safety nets, informal workers are some of the most vulnerable in the labour market.