Global Shifts in the Employment Structure

We investigate shifts in employment structures during the first decades of the twenty-first century at a global scale, focusing on a diverse set of countries, including nine EU countries, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Russia, India, and S.Korea. Using the jobs-based approach as the common underlying methodology enhances the comparability of results. The findings highlight a lack of a singular prevailing pattern in employment changes, revealing a variety of shift patterns across countries and time periods. Nonetheless, occupational upgrading emerges as the most frequently observed pattern. A sectoral analysis underscores the pivotal role of private services as the primary driver of employment growth across most countries. A distinct contrast is evident between the dynamics of private and public services. Private services tend to foster job polarization, while public services lean towards job upgrading, with some notable exceptions. Examining the gender dimension over the past two and a half decades reveals a marked improvement in the status of female workers. In many instances, there has been a feminization of employment, and women have experienced more occupational upgrading than their male counterparts. While this represents a general trend, significant exceptions exist.