Data, algorithms and platforms: A framework for understanding work and employment in the late digital age

This paper presents a conceptual framework for analysing the impact of digital technologies on work and employment, developed on the basis of nearly a decade of research by the Employment team of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The framework combines three elements. First, a historical situation of the digital revolution within the Schumpeterian theory of long-wave technological change, which also helps locate recent advances in AI within a longer cycle of innovation and socio-economic transformation. Second, a discussion of three structural peculiarities of the digital economy (the hyperabundance of usable information, the centralised flexibility facilitated by algorithmic control, and the platformisation of economic activity), each of which is being intensified and extended by current developments in AI. Third, an analysis of the three main vectors (digitisation, automation and platformisation) through which the digital revolution is transforming work and employment. Drawing on our empirical findings, we argue that the main impact of the digital revolution has been on the modes of coordination and control of work rather than on employment levels: digitisation has driven a significant intensification of work and erosion of worker autonomy; automation has had small and generally positive employment effects; and platformisation is extending from digital labour platforms to regular work environments, a tendency that the rapid integration of AI is likely to accelerate. The central policy challenge, we argue, is institutional: digital technologies have transformed work without a commensurate transformation of the institutional framework that should govern them.