This will be a significant week in terms of job prospects for millions around the world. In Britain, Wednesday's annual budget will include £126 million ($175.6m) in new funding for 40,000 traineeships and "flexi-job" apprenticeships. In the US, the employment report for February is expected to show the strongest pace of hiring since November. And China's annual work report for 2021 will lay out its job creation target.
Job creation, not just retention, is becoming the focus in the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic even as the world of work continues, inexorably, to change. In 2020, it was all about WFH – working from home. Now, it is metamorphosing into WFA – working from anywhere.
Last month, Spotify, the music streaming company, joined a lengthening list of employers to adopt a WFA policy for its 6,500 workers in 73 countries. Software giant Salesforce and tech firms Dropbox, Facebook and Microsoft have already announced similar plans for the post-pandemic era.
The implications for big cities, not least the property market, transport network and the coffee shop ecosystem that nourishes and is nurtured by office complexes, is unclear. So, too, the more long-term effects on the urbanisation trend.
What is crystal clear though is that the biggest effects of the pandemic have been on service sector jobs, those that can’t use WFH or WFA models. Even in Israel, which has been able to deliver more Covid-19 vaccines per capita than anywhere else in the world, the restaurant industry’s workforce has dropped by 80 per cent.
Joe Biden's administration has not included funding for worker retraining programmes in its $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package. Bloomberg
Unsurprisingly then, economists say it can't – and won't – be business as usual even in a fully vaccinated world. New analysis by the US government predicts a boom of at least 10 per cent by the end of the decade for a clutch of white-collar jobs in medicine, health-science and technology. Epidemiologists, medical scientists, web developers, biochemists, biophysicists and computer systems administrators will be in demand. But the job of restaurant host, bartender, travel agent, hotel clerk and server will be increasingly imperilled, with the need for these occupations declining by at least 16 per cent by 2029.
A new report on the future of work by the McKinsey Global Institute echoes the general tone if not the specifics of that forecast from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. Like the American economists, McKinsey's research looks at the emerging picture for this decade. It goes beyond the increasing undesirability of restaurant and retail jobs and discerns a broader swing altogether, well away from low-skilled occupations. In assessing the workforce skills required in eight countries that account for almost half the global population and 62 per cent of GDP, McKinsey says "workforce transitions may be larger in scale than we estimated before the pandemic".
The report, which studied three Asian countries, four in Europe, and the US, found that 100 million workers in those eight countries – or one in every 16 – will need to transition to a quite different occupation by 2030. In India and China, the research saw a decline “in the share of agricultural occupations as well”. What’s most striking is the report’s prediction of leaner days ahead for workers without a college degree and the grim assessment that “more than half of the low-wage workers currently in declining occupations may need to shift to occupations requiring different skills in higher-wage brackets to remain employed”. It discerns a common trend across countries. While net job losses before the pandemic were concentrated in middle-wage manufacturing occupations, which were affected by automation, now, low-wage, low-skill jobs will literally vanish.
Whatever the reason – increasing automation, the pandemic-accelerated digitalisation of commerce and altered patterns of business – the McKinsey report is making the same point as the US government analysts. Low-skilled workers need to be re-trained and upskilled as quickly as possible. It seems a vast, possibly bottomless endeavour. How does this even come to pass?
Businesses can start some of the heavy lifting by redesigning tasks and working practices and using mentorship and internal academy schemes to enable their workers to train for higher-skilled jobs with career pathways. Walmart, the American supermarket chain, already uses a version of this. Last year, IBM, Bosch and Barclays started something similar.
Countries such as Barbados are offering remote work visas. AFP
Perhaps governments need to start protecting the 'precariat' – freelance workers in precarious conditions
But governments have the biggest and most significant role to play. Early on in the pandemic, many advanced economies instituted furlough schemes, some of which continue. But with the future of work itself in transition, more may need to be done. Workers – and the companies that employ them – may need assistance while they retrain in order to catch up with the real needs of the emerging labour market.
Meanwhile, national legislatures have a duty to consider better laws to govern the shifting nature of work. In the initial months of the pandemic, gig workers received help from some governments. It was the first time they were recognised alongside regular employees as legitimate beneficiaries of unemployment provisions. Perhaps the time has come for legislation that allows the “precariat” – freelance workers who exist in an unpredictable system – to accumulate social security benefits even as they work across multiple platforms and in different companies.
There is no guarantee any of this will happen. It is worth noting that the Biden administration did not include funding for worker retraining programmes in its $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package, which was approved by the US House of Representatives and is currently under consideration by the Senate. However, it is entirely possible that Congress could correct that lapse.
That said, this is not an American issue. It goes much further. Governments and the private sector in every part of the world must now work together to respond to the largest structural recalibration of work since the farm-to-factory migration of the early industrial revolution.
Rashmee Roshan Lall is a columnist for The National
In the UAE’s arid climate, small shrubs, bushes and flower beds usually require about six litres of water per square metre, daily. That increases to 12 litres per square metre a day for small trees, and 300 litres for palm trees.
Horticulturists suggest the best time for watering is before 8am or after 6pm, when water won't be dried up by the sun.
A global report published by the Water Resources Institute in August, ranked the UAE 10th out of 164 nations where water supplies are most stretched.
The Emirates is the world’s third largest per capita water consumer after the US and Canada.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Favourite holiday destination: Whenever I have any free time I always go back to see my family in Caltra, Galway, it’s the only place I can properly relax.
Favourite film: The Way, starring Martin Sheen. It’s about the Camino de Santiago walk from France to Spain.
Personal motto: If something’s meant for you it won’t pass you by.
One showed 28 per cent of female students at a Dubai university reported symptoms linked to depression. Another in Al Ain found 22.2 per cent of students had depressive symptoms - five times the global average.
It said the country has made strides to address mental health problems but said: “Our review highlights the overall prevalence of depressive symptoms and depression, which may long have been overlooked."
Prof Samir Al Adawi, of the department of behavioural medicine at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, who was not involved in the study but is a recognised expert in the Gulf, said how mental health is discussed varies significantly between cultures and nationalities.
“The problem we have in the Gulf is the cross-cultural differences and how people articulate emotional distress," said Prof Al Adawi.
“Someone will say that I have physical complaints rather than emotional complaints. This is the major problem with any discussion around depression."
Daniel Bardsley
Points to remember
Debate the issue, don't attack the person
Build the relationship and dialogue by seeking to find common ground
Express passion for the issue but be aware of when you're losing control or when there's anger. If there is, pause and take some time out.
