Creating jobs is one of the most challenging tasks there are. Many challenges have long existed and continue do so: 600 million jobs are needed worldwide, there are 250 million people in the NEET category (mostly women) and 2 billion workers are in the informal economy. There is a significant gender dimension in all of this. COVID-19 adds new challenges. ILO has forecast unemployment at 140 million and a risk of having 340 million job losses in a second pandemic wave. The GDP will surely rebound; however, a job-rich recovery requires economic transformation, otherwise the risk is that there will be growth without jobs, as already experienced in the recent past. It implies a move to high-added-value productions as well as movements of people, especially from rural to urban areas. 

The labour demand moves towards new skilled jobs, triggering a transition towards better-remunerated jobs. More productivity is sought in return for higher wages and good jobs. Since the labour markets were already going through a deep transformation in prepandemic times, policies were already focused (or refocused) on strengthening social protection, ramping up investment in human capital, adapting market regulations and upgrading taxation systems. Some challenges will remain, and routine jobs will be replaced by robots. Digital platforms are completely changing the way we do business. Personal presence is not an issue for doing business. Production reshoring may still happen, with companies producing domestically reaping the benefits of new technologies. Demand for high cognitive skills and socio-emotional skills will increase. 

These changes are transforming the employment relationship. With the gig economy, traditional full-time employment contracts will still be around, but they will be less common. Freelancers will increase in number. It is important to keep these pre-pandemic trends in mind because they will be more marked in the post-pandemic period (see also topic 8). We expect that some classes of workers will be more exposed, such as young people, women and informal workers. Gaps between the developed and undeveloped worlds will deepen, since fewer jobs can be performed from home, because of the prevalence of lowskilled jobs in labour-intensive sectors, and due to the dominant presence of informal workers, low access to social protection and income support. 

High levels of debt can be an issue as well, not only for states but also for households. We are heading towards a “new normal” in which trends from the past are accelerating and this is increasing the urgency of the policy response. Digital transformation will make measures to exclude digital exclusion urgently necessary. An increase in public debts will call for strengthened fiscal resources mobilisation, universal social protection to cover everything, and a rethink of the mechanism for supporting firms and jobs in face of a huge covariate crisis. Economic transformation imposes new rules regarding taxation (this is in fact a transversal issue in all topics), the fight against tax avoidance, especially for immaterial global businesses, with more progressivity and less tax on labour and more on other tax bases such as those of digital platforms or companies (tax avoidance was also raised in topic 1, 3 and 6, and excessive tax on labour is also in topic 6 and 1). 

Workers must be helped to adapt to a changing labour market. There is momentum for change because the shock concerns both supply and demand. Social protection floors are envisaged in the SDGs and they imply a set of services that can be used even if you cannot buy them (see also topic 4). The best social protection is a good, formal job. Creating high-quality jobs must be the ultimate goal of the Recovery Plan. Transitions will be ensured by enabling workers’ adaptability, equipping them with the right skills and ensuring activation measures and adequate protections to maintain their jobs or protect their income.