Even before the pandemic, with the rapid introduction and development of new technologies, the global economy, including the labor market, was at the stage of digitalization and transformation, and the COVID-19 crisis only gave additional impetus and increased the speed of these changes. Thus, according to a survey of CEOs and senior managers conducted by McKinsey in July 2020, the crisis caused by COVID-19 accelerated in just a few months the digitization of customer interactions and supply chains, as well as internal operations, which would have taken 3-4 years before the pandemic.

This, in turn, has given many companies an incentive to create new lines of business. For example, following the trend of previous years, one of the top priorities for business leaders remains the implementation of cloud computing, Big Data and e-commerce. There has also been a significant increase in interest in robots and artificial intelligence (AI). This significant attention from the private sector is partly due to the fact that an economy based on continuous improvement in technology is one of the main drivers of growth.

At the same time, technological advances and digitalization are also having a positive impact on the labor market and will lead to an increase in productivity by reducing the amount of human resources spent on tasks that are now the responsibility of computers or algorithms. At the same time, increased productivity will lead to reduced costs for companies and expansion of production, hence job creation.

In addition, innovation and automation of production processes in the future will allow many companies to create new types of jobs that do not exist today. For example, there is already widespread implementation of online retailing, especially in high-income countries, and the emergence of a new class of retailers operating in supply chains without the need for inventory or storage.

Job creation is also expected in industries where skills that are difficult to automate, such as social and language skills, are prevalent. Examples here are health and social services (at risk of automation in about 21% of existing jobs) and education (8%). The low risk of automation in education is due to the fact that the skill mix in this industry is 148% higher than the average for all industries for social skills and 202% higher for language skills.