Studies empirically assessing the impacts of digitalisation on employment, labour market (e.g. skill mismatch) and working conditions are growing in number worldwide and in Switzerland. Nonetheless, evidence is still far from being robust and conclusive. In fact, monitoring, analysing and properly understanding the transformations of labour induced by digitalisation is a complex endeavour for a number of reasons. One of them refers to the existing concepts, data and metrics (indicators) of labour statistics that, being still mainly anchored to standard models of labour supply and demand, struggle to capture the rising work flexibilisation in its various forms and to keep the pace with the rapidly evolving economy.

We contend that there is a need for: (i) new data that provide a longitudinal perspective and variables that capture flexibilisation; (ii) metrics and indicators describing quantitatively and qualitatively individual professional life courses, linking static and flow concepts, and (iii) synthetic indicators that together with disaggregated ones can help better understand and forecast what is really happening.

Ms Uma Rani from the International Labour Office in Geneva and Ms Silvia Perrenoud from the Federal Statistical Office in Neuchâtel will provide a clear-cut picture of the visions and the works that are going on at international and national level on this issue.

Programme

Martedì 29 gennaio 2019, ore 14.00
Manno, Palazzo E, Aula 210

Introduction - Maurizio Bigotta and Fabio Losa (DEASS)

• Labour statistics innovations: the international level - Uma Rami (ILO)
• Les innovations dans les statistiques du travail au niveau national - Silvia Perrenoud (OFS)
• Discussion (in French or English)

Keynote Speakers

• Silvia Perrenoud
  Est collaboratrice scientifique à la section Travail et vie active à l’Office fédéral de la statistique OFS. Elle est en charge d’analyses statistiques en lien avec l’enquête suisse sur la population active (ESPA).

• Uma Rami Amara
  Senior Economist at the Research Department of the ILO, she holds a Ph.D. in Development Economics from the University of Hyderabad, India. Her current research focuses on global supply chains in the electronics sector and the platform economy, wherein she explores how labour and social institutions could be strengthened to address economic and social inequality.