Job Market in Flux

Temporary Work - from time cards to self-determination

"Work" – what is that? For most people it's much more than daily duty that we earn our monthly paycheck with. Even if we complain a lot about the job, it provides quite some sense of life for many people. Work gives you a certain status, a clear identity in society and last but not least steady social contacts. On top, it structures the daily routine and life time and serves many as self-fulfillment.

Work is in flux. The same job your whole life? That's the past. The times of full time life positions has gone. Time cards and life-long security are no longer the characteristics of work. More and more different associations of this term will prevail. Working becomes self-dependent action and planning -  also and even more beyond fixed office hours and buildings.

The changes are drastic and provoke insecurity. While „the old labour“ is fading and becoming a personal experience instead of an abstraction, the outlines of the „new labour“ remain unclear. The shift in the labour landscape has arrived in the midst of society. The way we will work tomorrow has thus become a profound subject to the state, enterprises and the individual.

Self-employment, freelance project work, temporary unemployment or several jobs at the same time: this will be daily reality for most people. The dependence of the industrial age will be replaced by self-determination. There will be new forms of employment being characterised by freelance work. This can be perceived as a threat, but also as a chance.

So the order of the day will be: creativity. And the most important rule of the creative industry is: there are no learnable rules to be processed. The labour of tomorrow will face us with new requirements: We have to handle insecurity, we mustn't be afraid of experimentation as well as trial and error. And with all that, the rules and framework have to be newly measured and defined.

Last but not least the globalization demands a lot from the employees. The world is cross-linked and it is impossible today to discuss tomorrow's labour in Germany without having a look at the entire world. This very globalization and a strengthened liberalization of the economic and social policy contribute to a development of the global job market. On the one hand more and more jobs are being done location-independent, and on the other hand the second order of the day: mobility. Many employees have to be ready to leave anytime, be it permanently or temporarily, to promote their career. Project working and fixed-term contracts replace the classic working conditions today. Not only consultants and sales representatives are demanded a minimum of mobility, but also film industry members or trainees are among the "noble nomads" of our globalized times.

Our labour culture will have to change then! Familiar trends as the mentioned globalization of the job market, the aging society and the progressing tertiarisation, hence the increasing service economy, will not only show in statistics, but be tangible for each individual. The next decades will be marked by a new quality of labour and with this "new labour“ different value systems and structures will infiltrate our society.

 Read more about "short-term accommodation" and "mobile life" >>