Researchers respond to young people’s requests for information about the future

The article ‘The Future of Work in the Nordic Countries’ is Zhen Im’s contribution to the New Nordic Lexicon, which disseminates information and research to young people. The subject of each article written for the lexicon was requested by young people themselves as part of a consultation process. They understandably take an interest in what future workplaces and patterns will look like, and how this will impact society.

The article explains that work across all sectors will become greener and more digitalized, and this will have a big impact. For less fortunate communities, these changes will come on top of earlier, detrimental transformations, including robotisation and the closure of manufacturing industries. For others, they will provide new opportunities for retraining and the development of different jobs. While Nordic workers are relatively well protected by the welfare state, key challenges remain, including retraining being biased towards certain groups, unequal distribution of new jobs across the region, and an ageing workforce.

The New Nordic Lexicon is part of nordics.info and aims to disseminate research and information to young people. It is supported by the A.P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Fond til almene Formaal. Nordics.info is a research dissemination website and part of the university hub Reimagining Norden in an Evolving World (ReNEW), supported by NordForsk. ReNEW has six partners, including Copenhagen Business School (with primarily scholars from the Departments of International Economics, Government and Business, and Business Humanities and Law), Södertörn University, Aarhus University, and the universities of Iceland, Oslo and Helsinki.