Season 3

Season 3 — Future

The future of the labour market does not begin tomorrow. It is being made today — in the decisions of people who change their profession, in companies searching ever further afield for workers, and in the places where the competences needed right now are missing.

This season, we are not trying to predict the future. We are looking at what is already changing — and asking where it might lead us.

Share your observations

Season 1People Season 2Work Season 3Future Season 4Kayroma

Field report / 001

Research question

Does the future of work begin where borders end?

For most of history, where a person lived also determined where they worked.

People worked where they lived, and companies looked for workers mainly where they themselves operated.

That dependency is growing weaker.

Today, someone living in Poland can find work in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, or somewhere else in Europe entirely. A company that cannot find the right workers in its own region can start searching hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.

Remote work has pushed the borders even further. In some professions, a person does not even need to change their place of residence to work for a company located in another country.

But the possibility of crossing a border does not mean that distance disappears. Language remains, as do qualifications, documents, differences in law, pay, work culture, and the ways of describing professional experience.

Information also remains. A person must know that the right professional opportunity exists somewhere. A company must know that somewhere there is a person with the competences it needs.

The international labour market can therefore be enormous, and at the same time remain surprisingly small for those who only see a small fragment of it.

Perhaps in the future the question "where do you work?" will mean something quite different than it does today.

And perhaps another question will become more important: how far does the place where a person can be needed really reach?

“A border can separate states. It does not have to separate possibilities.” — KAYROMA Research Journal

On the margin of today's date

Today is World Roller Coaster Day and International Lighthouse Day. Two observances that seem to have nothing in common. One is a reminder of sudden changes of direction. The other — of a point that remains visible even when the way leads through the unknown. The labour market can be both at once. And as work, people and opportunities cross borders more and more often, perhaps we need not only the courage to set out. Sometimes we also need to know what to look for on the horizon.

Share your observations

Field report / 002

Research question

In a few years, will we be looking for professions, or for skills?

For many years, a profession was one of the simplest ways to describe a person in the labour market.

Electrician. Welder. Programmer. Driver. Nurse. Mechanic. Engineer.

One word could say a great deal. But the world of work is changing faster than the names of professions.

Technology is taking over part of the workload. Automation is changing processes. Artificial intelligence is starting to perform tasks that only recently seemed reserved for people.

At the same time, new tasks, new specialisations and competences are emerging, for which commonly understood names sometimes do not yet exist.

A person may work in the same profession for ten years, and by the end of that time their daily work may look completely different from how it looked at the start.

What employers look for is changing too. Positions and diplomas matter less than they used to; what matters more are specific skills, experience, the ability to learn, to solve problems, and to find one's footing in new conditions.

A problem arises when a person has the competence that is needed, but their profession is called something different from the one the company is looking for.

Or when a company is looking for a specific position, while in reality it needs a set of skills that can be found across many different professions.

The faster the labour market changes, the less obvious become the labels we have spent years trying to use to organise it. Perhaps the future will not primarily ask: "What is your profession?" Perhaps it will ask: "What can you actually do?"

“The names of professions describe the world we already know. Skills can describe the world that is only just emerging.” — KAYROMA Research Journal

On the margin of today's date

Today is World Humanitarian Day. It is a reminder of people who put their knowledge, experience and skills to use exactly where they are needed most at a given moment. It is a special kind of work, but it holds a universal thought within it. Competences do not gain meaning when we can name them well. They gain meaning when they can serve someone or something. Perhaps that is why the future of work will increasingly ask not only what profession we practise, but also: what can we do when we are truly needed?

Share your observations

Field report / 003

Research question

What happens when there are fewer workers than there is work?

For generations, the labour market rested on a simple assumption.

It is the person who looks for work. They submit documents, respond to job ads, present their experience, and try to convince a company that it is worth hiring them.

But demographics are beginning to change that relationship.

In many European countries, societies are ageing. The generations entering the labour market are smaller than the ones leaving it.

At the same time, the economy still needs people. Specialists, technicians, production workers, drivers, carers, engineers, fitters, tradespeople and people in thousands of other professions are needed.

Automation may reduce demand for some kinds of work, but it does not mean a world in which people stop being needed. In many places, the opposite is happening.

Companies are taking longer and longer to find workers. They extend their recruitment to other regions and countries. They compete not only for customers, technology and capital, but also for people with the right competences.

A worker who once competed with other candidates for a single position may one day find themselves choosing between several companies looking for exactly their experience.

This changes more than recruitment. It changes pay, employment conditions, professional mobility, the relationship between employee and employer, and the way companies will have to think about people.

For decades, perhaps, we asked: how can a person find the right job? The future may force us to ask the opposite question. How will the right job find the person?

“For years, people looked for work. It will be interesting to see what happens once work starts looking for people.” — KAYROMA Research Journal

On the margin of today's date

Today is World Optimist Day. It is a fitting date to reflect on the future of the labour market. We can look at demographic change, labour shortages, automation and migration purely as problems. We can also see in them the moment when the meaning of the human being in the labour market changes. If there are fewer and fewer people with the competences that are needed, perhaps their experience, time and decisions will be valued more than before. Optimism, after all, does not mean believing that everything will be fine. Sometimes it is enough to notice that change can open possibilities that did not exist before.

Share your observations

Field report / 004

Research question

Will the future of work have an address?

For a long time, an address said a great deal.

Where a person lives. Where they can work. Which companies they have access to. How far they can commute each day.

The labour market was, to a large extent, geography. Today that map is starting to change.

Some people work remotely for companies hundreds of kilometres away. Others travel abroad for work for a few weeks or months, complete a project, and return.

Still others move permanently, because a professional opportunity appeared in another city or another country.

Companies, too, are ceasing to look only at their own surroundings. When they lack workers, specialists, or specific competences, the search area starts to widen.

First to neighbouring towns. Then regions. Then countries.

Eventually, teams form whose members live in different places, speak different languages, and have different professional experiences, yet work on the same problem.

Not every profession can be practised remotely. Machines, buildings, patients, vehicles, production and infrastructure still exist in specific places. But even then, the place of work and the worker's place of origin need not be the same place.

The future labour market may therefore be both very local and entirely international at once. If a person lives in one country, gained experience in a second, works in a third, and their next professional opportunity lies somewhere else again — where, exactly, is their labour market?

“Work always happens somewhere. A person does not always have to come from the same place.” — KAYROMA Research Journal

On the margin of today's date

Today is the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. It is a subject far more serious than the labour market. But perhaps here, too, there is a thought worth taking with us. When people from different countries, cultures, languages and backgrounds work together, it very quickly becomes clear how much they have in common. There is work to be done. A problem to be solved. A promise to be kept. A person next to us to be helped. Something to be built that will serve others tomorrow. Origin, language or beliefs do not have to disappear then. They simply stop being the only thing through which we see another person. Perhaps a world in which we more often build shared prosperity and need one another gives us more reasons to notice what unites us, instead of looking for what divides us.

Share your observations

Field report / 005

Research question

How much of the future already exists, but we do not yet see it?

We often imagine the future as something that has yet to arrive.

New technologies. New professions. New ways of working. A world that does not exist yet.

But part of the future may already exist.

Somewhere there is a company that is looking for a worker today. Somewhere there is a person who is looking for work right now, or wondering about changing the course of their working life.

Somewhere there is a competence needed to solve a problem. Somewhere there is a problem waiting for the right competence.

Sometimes a thousand kilometres separates them. Sometimes a single border. Sometimes a different language. And sometimes only the fact that neither side knows the other exists.

Over three seasons, we have looked at people, work, and what may come next. We have seen how much depends on information, place, language, experience, competence, and the moment at which an opportunity appears.

We have also seen that companies can be looking for workers while the right people are looking for work — and, despite this, never meet.

We describe the labour market through the number of job openings, unemployment, employment, wages and missing specialists. It is far harder to measure the opportunities that existed for a moment but were never taken.

Perhaps part of what we call the future does not require waiting for a new world at all. Perhaps the people already exist. The companies already exist. The work already exists. The competences already exist. The opportunities already exist. The only question that remains is: how many of them will never happen, because they remain invisible to one another?

“Not every future has to be invented. Some futures are only waiting for the moment when they become possible.” — KAYROMA Research Journal

On the margin of today's date

Today marks the anniversary of the decision after which Pluto stopped being classified as a planet. Pluto did not disappear. It did not change its orbit simply because we changed its category. What changed was our understanding of what we were looking at. That is a rather fitting ending for a season devoted to the future. Because not everything is what it seemed to be at first. Sometimes the problem is not that something is missing. Sometimes we have been looking at something for years — using categories, names and assumptions that have stopped being enough. This is true of planets. Perhaps, sometimes, it is also true of people, work and opportunities. And then the world does not always need to be changed. Sometimes it first needs to be seen differently.

Share your observations

Season 3 has come to an end

We are closing our reporting for the season devoted to the future. We watched the boundaries of the labour market, the shifting meaning of professions and skills, the shortage of workers, and the places where people, companies and opportunities can meet.

The questions we gathered lead us further. The next season will be called Kayroma.

Go to Season 4 — Kayroma