Back in January 2010 we wrote a report for UK government on The Shape of Jobs to Come. The study highlighted new jobs that might emerge in the global economy by 2030 as a result of exponential developments and breakthroughs in science and technology. Many of those are now real jobs and the rest are still likely to materialise.
The gig economy is no longer simply a phrase that individuals existing as professional outliers use to describe themselves. Instead, the gig economy describes a substantial, rapidly growing part of modern society. If you aren’t a part of it, the odds are you know someone who is.
Increasingly, many Western societies face a ‘double whammy’: simultaneous high levels of youth unemployment and skills shortages. But it is not just formal and traditional skills that are needed; ‘new literacies’ from the digital to real world, verbal to visual, scientific and financial are being highlighted as critical to our futures. New literacies could be seen as little more than rebranding of old ideas, but in doing so it may focus attention and garner momentum for change and new solutions for our new economies.
