Why This Study Now?

The study of occupational and structural changes in employment has garnered significant attention within the social sciences since the 1970s, driven by early contributions from scholars like Daniel Bell and Harry Braverman, who explored the implications of transitioning to a post-industrial society and the impact of technology on labour, respectively. Since then, particularly from the 1990s onward, the field has expanded, focusing on how technological, organizational and other transformations affect workers based on their skill level or the task content of their jobs, with the common goal of understanding how employment structures evolve over time. This book contributes to this body of literature by pursuing three main objectives. First, it updates the international evidence on occupational change using the most recent data available, covering approximately two decades up to 2022, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment structures. Second, it broadens the scope of analysis beyond the traditionally studied regions (the US and Europe) to include a wider set of countries, encompassing also other developed and developing nations such as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, India, Russia and South Korea. This expanded coverage allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the global mechanisms driving employment transformations, which can vary significantly across different contexts. Third, the book seeks to produce comparable evidence on a global scale by applying consistent methodologies across all countries studied, thereby minimizing the risk of discrepancies arising from methodological differences rather than actual variations in employment trends.