Changing meaning and patterns of work

• The work/leisure meaning and balance are changing, driven by priority to self-fulfilment and an increasing entrepreneurial spirit, moving towards self-actualization economy.
  | Related Megatrends: Inequalities; Technology;  Education;
• New work patterns include:
• emerging flexible and decentralised ‘knowledge-based’ workforce, working from remote locations and collaborating across different countries and time zones;
• work is increasingly more cognitively complex, more collaborative, more dependent on technological competence, more mobile and less dependent on geography;
• decentralisation of work and questioning of hierarchical structures, with development of self-accountability and entrepreneurship;
• work becomes less conventional, non-routine tasks outpacing routine tasks by 20% since 1960.
• Project work, one example of non-routine activity, increased 40-fold over the past 20 years.
• In the 'Gig Economy', jobs are chosen on an ad hoc basis through online platforms, based on ones own interests, skills, and timeframe. The  'Gig Economy', 'on-demand', 'collaborative' or, more generally 'platform economy' forms are increasing – e.g. Airbnb, Uber, Blabla Car, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Task Rabbit, etc. | Related Megatrend: Inequalities
• Shared Economy platforms such as Uber, Helpling, and Upwork are rapidly transforming the working and employment procedures, creating more flexible job opportunities, lowering operational costs, and developing new income generation and profit distribution systems.  | Related Megatrend: Inequalities
• The collaborative/cooperative work (Uber-style model) could help meet seasonal work demands - such as at tax-time, or high organisational periods in public or corporate sectors, high work demand periods in hospitals, etc. (eventually replacing agencies).
  | Related Megatrend: Inequalities
• An estimated 10% of the European adult population (in 15 countries surveyed) has used at least once online platforms for providing some type of labour services; about 2% are main platform workers (work at least 20 hours a week online and earn at least 50% of their income via those labour platforms.)  
  | Related Megatrends: Inequalities; Technology; Education;
• In the United States and EU15, 162 million people — representing 20-30% of the working-age population — engage in some form of independent work.
• In Germany, 21 million people (30% of working age population), in the UK 14 million people (26% of working age population) are independent workers. 
• In France, there are more than 4 million slashers – 16% of the active population; for 77% of them, the second job being in a different sector than their primary job.
  | Related Megatrend: Inequalities
• In the EU countries, the share of part-time employment went up from 16% in 2002 to 20% in 2014 while temporary employment grew from 27% to 32% during the same period.  
  | Related Megatrend: Inequalities
• Discussions about basic income guarantee for every (adult) person of the society are increasing, in the wake of automation, advanced robotics and AI. A 2016 survey found that 68% of people across all 28 EU member states would “definitely or probably” support some form of universal basic income.
• There is increasing argument that personal data should be treated as a form of labour and therefore, people be paid for access to it.  
  | Related Megatrends: Technology; Inequalities

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