A new wave of investment is required in education, health and care to create a healthier labour market, tackle social mobility and support the post-pandemic world economy, the World Economic Forum has argued.
The WEF’s Jobs for Tomorrow white paper, co-authored with researchers from Accenture and coinciding with the annual Davos conference, states that the current faltering global labour market is characterised by lower labour-force participation rates, higher job insecurity and stagnating real wages, even as some economies have vast numbers of unfilled jobs.
While much of the job discussions at Davos centred on the need for upskilling to meet the needs of technological change, the WEP’s paper focuses on more traditional social roles, without which the wider labour market cannot function.
It argues that “labour-market scarring risks becoming permanent with many who left the workforce unlikely to return without new…
