THE LABOR MARKET, EMPLOYABILITY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE ROMANIAN PUBLIC SECTOR.

AuthorGavriluta, Nicu
  1. Current challenges concerning labor market dynamics

    The insertion of youth on the labor market is a present-day issue, being debated at European and global level. Due to the multitude of factors influencing the evolution of the labor market, the impact of new technologies and artificial intelligence occupies an important place on the public agenda. Every year in Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum discusses, among other things, the developments and implications of a number of global changes in the labor market. The most important political leaders, specialists and influential executives correlate climate change, economic and banking changes, migration, but especially new technologies with the serious readjustments of the labor market in the coming years. Thus, the theme of the 2016 edition of the World Economic Forum was the fourth industrial revolution. The unanimous opinion of the participants was that we are at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, and the first effects will be seen in maximum 10 years. This revolution will produce visible changes in terms of lifestyle, especially in the labor market. New professions will appear and many more will disappear. For example, the report 'The future of jobs', published by the World Economic Forum, shows that 65% of children who start school now will have professions that do not exist today. Similarly, following the analysis of an important database (15 global economies representing 65% of the global workforce), it has been predicted that around 7.1 million jobs will disappear in the next 5 years and 2 million new jobs in the IT and engineering sectors will appear instead.

    In the report, the forecasts for Romania are quite worrying: 60% of existing jobs will disappear in the coming years due to the development of new technologies. The effects of these shifts on the labor market can be dramatic. A European Commission study, for example, shows that 41% of employees in Romania are 'digitally illiterate'. How do we meet these challenges triggered by the new technologies? Are we ready to face reconfigurations of such magnitude?

    In fact, two scenarios have been set up in Davos: an optimistic one (manufactured work will disappear, and people will work more lightly, will be better paid, will have more free time which they could dedicate to hobbies or creative activities) and a pessimistic one (social inequities will deepen, i. e. the poor will become poorer and the rich will become even richer).

    The fact that the great challenges are triggered by the field of technology and artificial intelligence (Chiacchio, Petropoulos and Pichler, 2018; Gavriluta, 2018) is also demonstrated by the European Commission (2018) report 'Employment and Social Developments in Europe'. The report's figures show that the labor market is in a swift rearrangement, with the services sector thriving to the detriment of production. In the European Union, the IT sector registered an increase of 80% in 2015 compared to 2000. According to the same report, significant increases were reported in the financial sector, in professional, scientific, research and technical activities or real estate.

    On the same note, that of the changes initiated by technology, is the interview given on July 25, 2017 by Dieter Zetssche, the CEO of Daimler AG, a concern that owns the well-known automotive brand Mercedes-Benz. His predictions are much more direct and he announced a future world completely different from the one we know today. 'From 2020 onwards, the car industry will change completely and our children will call cars by means of an application, cars that will, of course, not require a driver. No one will own cars anymore, but we will all have access to them. We will only need 5% of the parking space we need today. 90% to 95% of parking lots will become playgrounds. 1.2 million people die every year in traffic accidents. The accident rate is now 1/100,000 km; once we will have autonomous cars on the entire Earth, the rate will be 1/10,000,000 km' (Delahunty, 2017). The changes will affect insurance agencies (lower accident rates), the real estate market (people will prefer rents due to greater mobility in the labor market), health and medical services, justice, agriculture and other fields of production.

    For example, Dieter Zetssche announced in his 2017 interview: 'Tricorder X will be launched this year, a digital mechanism similar to those in Star Trek. It analyzes the retina, the blood sample and the breath by his smartphone. This is how medical tests will be carried out. In a few years, a significant part of the medical system will disappear (collection and interpretation of tests). 54 markers will give verdicts in various diseases'. In court, lawyers will be replaced by specialized software, which will reduce their number by 90%. In addition, legal solutions will be given in just a few seconds with an accuracy of 90% compared to the advice received from lawyers that has an accuracy of 70%. Farmer robots and the introduction of 3D printers in the industry will transform the two fields by making a significant human workforce available. For example, 'in China, they have already printed in 3D and built a complete six-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that is produced will be printed in 3D', says Dieter Zetssche in the same source.

    The scenario described by the Daimler AG CEO seems to come from a sci-fi film, as it breaks the boundaries between fiction and reality (Gavriluta, 2017). However, it is based on a series of real data in the current field of technology and covers precise periods, estimated between 5 and 20 years. Therefore, it needs enough attention. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne also published 'The Future of Employment' (Frey and Osborne, undated); the two build a mathematical algorithm based on which they calculate the probability that some professions will be completely computerized. Therefore, the transformations triggered by the field of high technology require a keen interest, both from economic agents and scientific research. In this respect, according to the report of a project carried out by the Romanian Academy in 2015, it is expected that the interest for education will increase 'in the context of a dynamic society, subject to technological pressures' (Vlad, 2015, p. 24).

    If this hyper-technological world is overlapped by a number of demographic changes (birth, mortality, migration), climate change (global warming) or a series of cultural, political and ideological factors, we could get an extremely complex picture in terms of the labor market's evolution in the foreseeable future. Research conducted in this regard highlights this dynamic of the labor market in recent years among higher education graduates (Mora, Teichler and Schomburg, 2007, pp. 11-34; Schomburg and Teichler, 2016).

    Is the young population ready for such changes? Can the existing education system deliver a workforce capable of meeting these new challenges? Do current public policies favor adaptation and ongoing professional training? These questions target the young population who is going through a full cycle of educational training and who, naturally, should be well connected to the social and labor market realities. We will take into account first and foremost the data regarding Romanian youth.

    A study conducted by INS (the National Institute of Statistics) in 2016, later published under the title 'Youth access to the labor market' and capitalized in the report 'Forecast of developments and trends in the labor market--Threats and opportunities. 2018', highlighted an interesting situation regarding young people between 15 and 34 years old in Romania. It is described in the figure below.

    The image clearly shows us that in today's Romanian society, education training does not have a continuous character. It is structured as a distinct period in professional training and only overlaps to a very small extent to the activity on the labor market. Once they finish their studies, young people look for jobs and no longer dedicate time to their professional development. Education may be given a utilitarian role, as it is perceived as a passport to occupying positions in society and on the labor market. At least for some young people, access to higher education involves the acquisition of a cultural and educational capital that can be exploited in the realm of power and symbolic exchanges, 'allowing access to dominant positions' (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 4; Bourdieu, 1970).

    Of course, in addition to the symbolic and cultural dimension (social prestige, the prospect of accessing high social positions, social recognition, etc.), academic education has a practical dimension as well, given by the specialization in different fields. However, this practical dimension also contains a symbolic layer. Our research shows that their choices are not entirely rational. They are not the result of a one hundred percent precise, pragmatic calculation. This refers to a research carried out in 2018 in several academic centers in Romania where we organized focus groups and discussions with students and employers. The topic dealt with the projections and expectations of university students and the labor market. Part of this research was carried out in a larger project conducted by the Romanian Academy entitled 'Developing the capacity of the Ministry of National Education to monitor and forecast the evolution of higher education in relation to the labor market'--SIPOCA 3, funded by the European Social Fund through the Operational Program Administrative Capacity (Romanian Academy, undated). The theory of rational choices is practically refuted in this case. Our research shows that the actions of actors are not always rationally shaped by precise ideals (Scott, 2000).

    Many students choose their faculties and majors according to certain models they have (friends, acquaintances, etc.), depending on...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT