Can We Build a Resilient Employment Market for an Uncertain Future?

Abstract

The primary objective of this chapter is to describe and consider popularly advocated policies and tactics for building resilience into the labor market and consider whether these policies will be enough to address the issues of inequality, instability, uncertainty, and growth that arise from an increasing automation of jobs. In considering these various policies, this chapter also raises important questions about how we measure value in an economy where growth, productivity, and benefits are decoupled from human labor, what role would government play in providing a stable framework for society, and whether or not it is time to allow productivity and growth, coupled as they are with technologies that outstrip human abilities, to drive the economy but no longer to govern society’s direction.