In the last chap, we saw how labor could be represented through skill identity in the digital space; the next logical step is to facilitate the movement of these skills in a frictionless & a modular (composable- hello #web3 ) fashion

This skill movement is how things get done and establish a value for an action or a set of steps. And this is true for not just skill, but money, an individual, a country and its economy, and the universe itself.

Let us take a step back and remind ourselves that once the skill identity is established for an individual, they have the option to become a full-time employee or a gig-worker and optimize their life by the projections of their industry and job nature. 3 Let's do a quick environmental scan to understand some popular narratives around the #futureofwork.

@balajis & #NetworkState

@naval on gigs

Full-time jobs are becoming inconvenient and inefficient. There is a rise in workers who take on gigs as freelancers in developed economies. But like every change, there's a transitionary phase granted covid has accelerated this transition

At the same time, people are becoming more conscious, selective, and diligent about what they work on. Here, initiatives like 80,000 hours are leading the way to help people make more informed career decisions. @80000Hours

Other trends - source:
@McKinsey

i) Fast changing landscape due to fundamentally new tech or socioeconomic conditions globally making adaptation much more challenging.
ii) Pandemics create waves of changes with opposite effects in various sectors.

iii) Career switches across an individual’s lifetime is significantly higher compared to just two generations back where it wasn’t uncommon to stick to one job - especially if it was in the public sector.

iv) Lesser percentage of people in the working-age group means higher taxes and obligation for the elderly and the young. With declining birth rates and even declining population, may countries such as Japan are sitting on a demographic time bomb.

v) Wages in many developed countries haven’t adjusted to price rise ( inflation ), which means the currently employed generation has unprecedented challenges. 10 vi) Vastly different aspirations from their careers today compared to the previous generation. We wish to thrive and not just survive, we want our careers to be full-filling and cool and different. -@waitbutwhy points out.

This ends our exploration w.r.t the individual's perspective and the trends and predictions. Let's see what the market offers as a solution / self-correcting. We can't exclude @a16z if we are talking about the future of anything. Right?

They had talked about the need to transition from traditional job platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn to “vertical job platforms” that address the specific need of a particular industry or candidate. What happened to craigslist will happen to job platforms.

In the wake of COVID-19 and the Great Rehiring*, these deep job platforms will play a critical role in getting people back to work as soon as possible, in the best jobs possible

At the same time, to counter the #reatattrition as @McKinsey points out a few strategies

1. Address burnout
2. Double down on health
3. Build skills
4. Reimagine the talent pool [Permanent + Temp Pool] (mckinsey.com/business-funct…)

This leads us to think about #gigeconomy. The term gig economy has become a mainstream phrase over the past decade. With the advent of internet, alternative job arrangements have become increasingly common.

The web brought the global economies closer, thereby making it possible for an individual to pick and choose the best from a global pool of talent. This knowledge worker oriented gig economy of today finds both the supply and demand internally.

The current job & gig platform that exists for workers belong to one of these four categories:

1. Job - such as LinkedIn
2. Freelancer - high skilled
3. Freelancer - medium skills
4. No Platforms - low skilled. 19
   Summary: We looked at skill movement, a quick environment scan on trends to look for in the labor market and future of work as jobs to gigs and job platform to deep job platforms and gig platforms to ...? ;)

In the next post, we will shed light on what’s wrong with these platforms and web2.0 in general and reimagine how the #futureofwork can look like in web3.0