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FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Work life is deeply personal, but understanding the realities of the broader labor market means looking at the data, from measuring the share of remote positions to monitoring pay inequality.
The pandemic, the cost of living crisis, and the advancement of AI have had profound effects on work and hiring. We have selected six trends for you to test your knowledge of how these factors are shaping the labor market. How representative are your experiences of work life?
See how accurately you can fill in the missing information in the incomplete tables below.
Remote work
As countries have returned to normal after the pandemic, many workplaces are still struggling to find the best hours to suit their staff and their businesses. The proportion of remote and hybrid job openings in many countries remains much higher than in 2019, as companies calculate a long-term balance for office attendance.
But this year has undergone a change of sorts. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced a tough five-day mandate in September. The move made him a figurehead for a growing number of leaders pushing to end remote work, including Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase and Elon Musk at Tesla. Is the United States becoming an outlier?
Gender pay gap
In the United States, wages have increased in real terms since 2000. But have they increased at the same rate for men and women? Cities and states in the US, as well as the UK, have introduced new transparency laws in an attempt to reduce a well-documented gender pay gap. Some regions have prohibited employers from asking about candidates’ salary history, and banned organizations punish workers who share details of their salaries.
Have your efforts helped reduce the wage gap?
AI
The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022 generated excitement and anxiety as it opened up a powerful new resource for many white-collar workers, but also raised fears that they could lose their jobs due to the technology.
Workplaces have been quick to keep up and take advantage of rapidly evolving technology. Employers have begun offering tools to staff and many have scanned the market for AI specialists. Recruiting has been competitive: the number of AI-related job openings has skyrocketed this year, and many high-level positions demand big salaries.
Doctors vs bankers
This year’s strike in the UK saw junior doctors receive a 22 per cent pay rise over two years, in an effort to address 15 years of inflation-related pay erosion that contributed to the loss of NHS doctors, either “Drexit”. Increasing demands on productivity and fear of burnout are striking similar tones among U.S. physicians. But how does the country’s medical sector compare to other industries in terms of hiring?
Many sectors have returned to the same hiring rate as they had before Covid. But population growth in the United States, particularly among people 65 and older, combined with a third of doctors The likelihood of retirement within the next decade has ensured that demand in medical fields remains high.
Older workers
As life expectancy has increased, social security budgets have come under pressure. Faced with an aging population and a shortage of workers, many countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have raised the age at which citizens can access mandatory pensions, often against strong opposition.
French workers went on strike after President Emmanuel Macron pushed for an increase in the state pension age, while China said it would raise its retirement age for the first time since 1978 to expand its workforce.
While the number of participants in the typical working age group of 15 to 64 years has barely changed in OECD countries since the 1990s, what impact are these trends having on the older generation?
Self-employment
The appeal of being your own boss is perhaps greater now than ever. The advent of working from home has given people greater flexibility and rapid expansion gig economy provided opportunities to get extra work. But what proportion of the UK workforce is currently self-employed?
The pandemic, and the UK’s accompanying furlough scheme, meant that many people who had previously identified themselves as self-employed were able to reclassify themselves as employees to claim help, according to the Office for National Statistics.
This means that some elements of the fall are artificial, but other factors, such as UK Supreme Court ruling that Uber workers are employees and IR35 reforms classifying some self-employed workers as “employees for tax purposes” – has also contributed.