Dr. Juliane Landmann is a project manager at the Bertelsmann Stiftung where she initiates empirical studies and reports with the aim of shaping sustainable economies. One of this studies introduced a strategic preview of the labor market 4.o. in Germany in the year 2030. For the study, the Bertelsmann Stiftung collaborated with the Ministry of Labor in Germany, Ministry of Education, universities, Microsoft and IBM, did a workshop with around 30 experts from the field and developed six scenarios for the labor market for the future.

The employees of the future can expect different starting points, which are discussed in more detail in the study. Juliane Landmann gave an abstract of these scenarios in her talk. For some scenarios in the labor market, some political decisions have to be made.  For example the unconditional basic income or fiber network all over the country.

There are mainly six employments scenarios for the year 2030:

i-factory master → Scenario 1 “Engineering nation with a heart”

business model architect → Scenario 2 “Silicon countryside with social conflicts”

crowd manager → Scenario 3 “Rhineland Capitalism 4.0”

local package deliverer → Scenario 4 “Digital strongholds and disconnected hinterland”

online investigator → Scenario 5 “Digital evolution in the federal competition”

accountant 4.0 → Scenario 6 “Digital failure”

But there are also horror scenarios with a big shift of high-qualified knowledge workers and underpaid “clickworkers”. A paradise for high-potential scientists that are paid well but on the other hand a security system that is near to collapse as we can see below on the scenario “Silicon countryside with social conflicts”. Also more and more people will work as freelancers by the year 2030.

After the talk, the audience had some questions: Who were the experts in the workshop that collected the results? And why the study is so human focused and has not a scenario where the machines do more of the work that humans do today? Juliane Landmann said that the aim of this study is to give a hint to politics what shift within the digitalization will happen in the near future and what challenges have to be discussed.

If you want to know more about the topic, you will find the presentation in German here: Labor_Market_4-0 (in German)