A micro-documentary about the Skill Scale Project produced by Oxford Sparks.
The global workforce is urged to constantly reskill, as technology tremendously changes our labour market. But despite recurring fears of mass unemployment, current literature suggests that the (digital) “technology revolution” tends to mainly automate specific tasks rather than entire occupations. Some occupations will disappear but more importantly the remaining ones will change, and entirely new jobs will emerge. In this process, the skill composition of professions changes. The work that is eliminated has different skill requirements than the newly created jobs, resulting in the paradoxical situation of simultaneous unemployment and labour shortage – the (digital) skill gap widens. In this fast-changing labour market, systemic oversight is key: To understand which skills and occupations are most marketable and have a sustained demand.
The SkillScale project leads into a new domain of labour market research. It showcases how the analysis of online generated labour market data can help us understand the relevance of new skills and sustainability of novel occupations. Studying the economic complexity of large-scale data from sources such as digital labour platforms or online job vacancies could enable us to better comprehend how the processes of skill formation leads to the emergence of new occupations. Ultimately, the findings of the project allow us to establish a contemporary taxonomy of skills, understand their application and support automated, individual, and far-sighted suggestions on sustainable reskilling and training in a future of technological disruption.
Departmental Research Lecturer
Project role: Principal Investigator
Fabian is a Departmental Research Lecturer in AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Eugenia investigates the role of skills and education for a sustainable future of work
MSc Student
Alongside her part-time MSc at the OII, Fiona works as a Research Associate for peace data applications and data ethics during violent conflict. She is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh.
MSc Student
Matthew is interested in developing computational models to better understand complex communication ecosystems. He studied mathematics and philosophy at Calvin University and worked as a software engineer in California for two years.
Former MSc Student
Ole explored public policy in times of digitalization. In particular, he wanted to look at how new data science methods could be used to improve policy-making. Before coming to Oxford Ole completed a degree in Political Science.
30 January 2023
Remote work is here to stay. But while many of us could work from "anywhere", the urbanisation of digital work continues. Cities are becoming the mega-hubs for online-mediated work. But what will this change bring to our cities and the rural regions
28 April 2021
The Conversation, 03 July 2023
In the evolving relationship between technology and society, humans have shown themselves to be incredibly adaptable. Dr Fabian Stephany and Dr Johann Laux share their insights on LLMs and the future of AI with The Conversation.
Heilbronner Stimme, 02 December 2022
Uniform training for employees could soon be a thing of the past, but the effort for individual training offers is still great. Representatives of the University of Oxford and TUM see opportunities for an automated process.
Digital technologies are transforming our work environments and demand for skills, with creative work severely affected. This project will use unique secondary data to measure changes in the UK’s creative service sector digital skill composition.
This programme supports research in the sphere of AI & Work.
