The labor market is facing a radical paradigm shift, the result of the coincidence in time of three major transitions: demographic, technological and climatic. To help the Basque Country address this triple challenge, the WORKinLan Summit congress was held in Bilbao this Thursday and Friday, closed yesterday by the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, and by Professor Sara de la Rica, who presented the Book at the summit Target for Employment in the Basque Country, prepared by his team at the Iseak Foundation. His analysis warns of the risk that technology will deepen the wage gap that already separates those who have high digital skills and those who lack them and occupy less qualified positions. Among her recommendations are that of reinforcing continuous training and public-private collaboration, in order to prioritize positive policies for employment.
The forum, organized by the Department of Labor and Employment of the Basque Government and the Iseak Foundation, in collaboration with EL CORREO, has served to analyze, together with a group of international experts, how this three-headed revolution is affecting the labor market and the recipes to address it. In closing, De la Rica expressed his wish that the White Paper “serve as a starting point for reflection”, while the lehendakari assumed the “institutional commitment” to use the document to ensure that “the Basque Country has higher employment rates and higher quality jobs. In fact, he announced that the report, commissioned by the vicelehendakari, Idoia Mendia, will be debated on the 28th in an interdepartmental meeting.
In his speech, the Lehendakari stressed the need to address these challenges through consensus with the agents involved and “giving special prominence to young people and, of course, to women.”
Urkullu highlighted the role played by Lanbide, “a fundamental tool for the defense of employment”. In this sense, he recalled the transformation that is being carried out in the Basque public employment body to make it more efficient in its mission of improving the skills of users to adapt them to the needs of companies, marked by accelerated digitization. “Thanks to this accompaniment and guidance service, each year hundreds of Basque men and women achieve their goal, which is none other than being able to find a job that allows them to meet their expectations for the future,” he pointed out.
After pointing out that unemployment in the Basque Country has dropped to 8.5% in a year that has beaten forecasts, he assured that his objective is to “reduce the percentage even further”, but always with the maxim that employment is of higher quality. “That is why I am grateful for the work carried out in this congress in which the challenges to be faced have been identified, seeking references and always keeping an eye on Europe”, he stressed.
Impact on wages
The White Paper on Employment analyzes the starting point of the Basque Country, which has strengths such as a high level of worker qualification, but also growing inequality, aggravated during the crisis. The lowest wages have fallen by 20% in the last decade and more than 8% of poor workers are already counted.
From there, he enters each of the challenges. The demographic transition especially affects the Basque Country, which has the lowest birth rate in Europe and one of the highest life expectancies. The document proposes solutions such as increasing the activity of those over 55 with disincentives to early retirement, as well as a greater participation of women in the labor market, affected by unwanted part-time hiring. The challenge of attracting highly educated foreign talent is also noted, given that “the Basque Country has less qualified immigration than other countries”.
The technological challenge is, according to De la Rica, one of the most worrisome due to the danger that it will aggravate growing inequality. The forum highlighted the difficulty of accessing the labor market without the necessary skills in technology: 45% of the new jobs that will arise in 2023 are related to the digital field, according to the firm The Bridge, which works with the BBK. The recipes for this challenge are continuous training and public-private collaboration, something also necessary to take advantage of the employment opportunities that will arise with the ecological transition.
The forum has included international experts such as the Nobel Prize in Economics David Card or the Belgian researcher Jan Eeckhout, who has warned about the market power of large multinationals over workers. “Together we all have to face up to counteract that force,” emphasized Sara de la Rica at the closing ceremony.