An ICTC Study
Emergent Employment
Published by ICTC, July 2021
The nature of work is changing. Increasingly, to the current world of work and its short-term people are moving away from long-term work future. An increasingly common phrase captures relationships in offices to short-term, flexible work this: “the future of work is now.” that takes place outside the traditional workplace. The future of work has become a catch-all term for these (and other) forward-looking labour market topics.
ICTC first investigated the future of work in this context in its 2020 paper, Loading: The Future of Work: Worldwide Remote Work Experimentation and the Evolution of the Platform Economy, which explored the evolution of these trends and noted that there are different opportunities and challenges for both low-paying gig work and more high-skilled, freelance work. As the pandemic continued, ICTC continued to monitor these and other shifts in the labour market with the intention of better understanding the future of work in Canada.
This report focuses on current and near-term changes to the nature of work as it is impacted by continued digitalization and the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote work and gig work form the crux of this analysis, though this report also touches on elements of labour relations, public policy, demographics, and globalization. Three guiding principles underpin this report, and drive its focus:
- Disruptive technologies, remote work, and changing labour models are becoming progressively prevalent. This demands attention
- The future of work is inextricably linked to digitalization, regardless of whether or not technological change is considered a driving force in changing work.
- The pandemic has irreversibly impacted the future of work. Current research on the world of work must acknowledge this reality, while understanding that the permanence of these impacts may be difficult to predict.
A combination of primary and secondary research methods was used in this report. Secondary research entailed a review of existing data and literature on the future of work, while primary research entailed web scraping of key jobs, interviews with 19 subject matter experts, and a survey of 1507 individuals — one-third gig workers, one-third remote workers, and one-third weighted to the general Canadian working population.
This report features three primary sections. Section I investigates the evolution of remote work, while Section II uncovers the multi-faceted and diverse world of gig work. Section III leverages insights gained throughout this research to propose a call to action: policy considerations are proposed that can help employers and workers navigate the increasingly digital, remote, and complex nature of work.
Researched and written by Trevor Quan (Senior Research & Policy Analyst), Khiran O’Neill (Research & Policy Analyst), Emerick Mary (Junior Research Analyst), and Sylvie Leblanc (Junior Research Coordinator) with generous support from Alexandra Cutean (Senior Director, Research and Policy), Mairead Matthews (Research & Policy Analyst), Arun Sharvirala (Data Analyst), and the ICTC Research & Policy team.
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