News
New Kid on the Block
The Pillars Scientific Advisory Council has gained in Bledi Taska a new member whose credentials and expertise are a perfect fit to help guide Pillars’ course towards inclusive labor markets.
Spotlight: Promoting Young Scholars Ekaterina Prytkova
When economists don’t talk to technology specialists, or vice-versa, the results can range from commercially disappointing to downright disastrous. Think of overengineered cars or planes that flopped in the marketplace, or of recent tragic failures in aircraft safety when bean counters prevailed over engineers.
European Labor Markets - Mastering Technological and Structural Change
The convergence of big data, artificial intelligence and extreme automation has proved highly disruptive to labor markets not just in Europe, but around the world. Add to this shifting trade patterns, with globalization giving way to regionalization and supply chains in turmoil, while entire industries are being upended through the efforts to decarbonize economies and adapt to climate change, and the need to hone new skills becomes clearly unavoidable.
Lost once? Aim higher
Losing one‘s job is one of the more severe psychological blows one can experience, similar in magnitude to a divorce. But while a divorce might actually improve your marriage skills for the next time around, especially because the skills needed remain practically identical, in a job-loss situation the skills used previously can become degraded or obsolete, in particular if the jobless period drags on, resulting over time in a skill mismatch with what the labor market requires.
Spotlight: Promoting Young Scholars Giulio Vannelli
Since he decided to go into Economics, Giulio Vannelli always had globalisation in his mind, in particular its core element, global value chains. That’s what he devoted his PhD thesis to, at the University of Trento last year, examining “Economic development in a globalised world: the role of Global Value Chains”. The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, honoured him with a PhD scholarship to this end.
1st Pillars Conference "Education, Skills and Worker Retraining"
Until just a few decades back you could count on the education you got in college seeing you all the way to retirement. Now, you have to reinvent yourself professionally several times during your working life just to stay current. Lifelong learning is the name of the game, and training and re-skilling the tools of choice.
Delphi Survey on Future Trends in Automation Technologies
PILLARS will run a global Delphi survey to gather different views on the future trends in emerging automation technologies, the industries that will adopt them and the tasks they will perform. To that purpose, we want to hear from technology experts in business, workers’ associations, inventors, researchers, and civil society organizations.
Spotlight: Promoting Young Scholars Ana Oliveira
Ana Oliveira joined the Pillars Team at UNU-MERIT in February 2022. Get to know her.
Conference on Education, Skills, and Worker Retraining
We are pleased to announce the 1st PILLARS Conference on Education, Skills, and Worker Retraining on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 February 2022.
Please note that due to the current Covid situation the conference will run in an online format and the dates have been changed to Thursday 17 and Friday 18 February 2022.
Spotlight: Promoting Young Scholars Christina Langer
One of the things PILLARS takes pride in is in promoting young talent. This month the spotlight is on Christina Langer, a scholar at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.
Fast-Five with PILLARS Coordinator Oliver Falck
PILLARS coordinator, Oliver Falck, explains what prompted the creation of yet another labour market think-tank.
Given the many think-tanks and research organisations devoted to labour, why Pillars? What is the rationale behind its creation?
Video Introduction of PILLARS
The main objective of the Horizon2020 project PILLARS is to provide policy makers and the public with information about what kind of (new) skills will be in demand and how to revise education and training systems to create the opportunities to acquire them. See Prof Oliver Falck and Prof Maria Savona explain how we are doing that in this introduction video.
Join the Expert Group on Future Technologies, Skills and Inclusive Labour Markets of the PILLARS project!
What is the Expert Group on Future Technologies, Skills and Inclusive Labour Markets? It is YOUR opportunity to engage with key policy makers in the government, academia, industry and civil society sectors, as well as, with the PILLARS project team to support the development of inclusive and evidence-based labour market policies.
Where PILLARS comes in...
Technological progress is influencing the way we live and work. Labour markets will adapt and demand new skills. New jobs will evolve, while others are likely to disappear. Three main factors have dominated European labour markets in recent decades and are likely to continue to influence them in the future: technological change, international trade and industrial transformation. However, it is not yet clear how exactly such advances will transform our labour markets. This is where PILLARS comes in. The first phase of the project is centred around taking stock.
PILLARS Kick-off meeting!
And we have started! On the 1st and 2nd of February 2021 all PILLARS project partners met online to officially start this three-year Horizon2020 project. After a few welcoming words of Oliver Falck (ifo Institute), Kerstin Wilde (EU REA) started the day with a short presentation.
