Project WeLaR’s final conference, “The Effects of Digitalisation, Globalisation, Climate Change, and Demographic Shifts on Labour Markets and Welfare States in the European Union”, provided an opportunity to share the project’s key findings and engage in dialogue with researchers examining the evolving dynamics of Europe’s labour market.
Organised by HIVA–KU Leuven and held on 12 June 2025 in Brussels, the conference featured 20 papers across six sessions. It brought together a diverse group of labour economists, sociologists, and other social scientists to present and debate research on the changing world of work.
The conference opened with a keynote address by Francesco Vona (Università degli Studi di Milano and Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei), who explored how to make Europe’s green transition both economically viable and politically sustainable by addressing its labour market impacts. Vona argued that to counter the growing backlash against climate policies and workers’ fears of being left behind, governments should adopt place-based strategies, as job losses from the energy transition tend to be geographically concentrated. These policies should include reskilling and retraining programmes, particularly in engineering and technical fields. He also noted that while green jobs often require higher skill levels, they don’t necessarily offer higher pay. The EU’s Just Transition Mechanism, which focuses on regions, is already yielding positive outcomes.
He also challenged the common practice of measuring “green jobs” at the occupational level, demonstrating that this approach tends to overestimate the greenness of these jobs. For instance, the job title “engineer” can apply to both coal mines and solar farms. Instead, Vona advocated for a task-based approach, which provides greater accuracy. Activities such as climbing a wind turbine or removing asbestos are clearly green tasks, while others, like designing aircraft, may not directly support the green transition.
Chair: Ilse Tobback (HIVA-KU)
Piotr Lewandowski (IBS) kicked off Session 1 with a discussion of his paper “Workers’ Exposure to AI Across Development”. He and his co-authors looked at data from 103 countries, covering almost 90% of global employment. They adjusted for differences in tasks within occupations between less and more developed countries. The research found that AI exposure correlates positively with GDP per capita: low- and middle-income countries exhibit fewer AI-exposed tasks, especially in high-skilled occupations. AI exposure rises over time mainly due to changes in tasks within occupations, rather than shifts in occupational structures.
Sabrina Genz (Utrecht University) presented her work “Bargaining for the Future: Collective Agreements and Firm-Level Automation Decisions”. The research seeks to provide some of the first descriptive evidence on the role of institutions in technology adoption – in this case the institution of the collective bargaining agreement, a central element of the labour market. The researchers’ preliminary results suggest that automation expenditures are higher in firms that are covered by firm-level collective bargaining agreements than in firms without them. In their next steps, Genz and co-author Emilie Rademakers will examine whether automation also changes the extent of collective agreement coverage.
Closing out the session, Tommaso Ciarli (University of Sussex) talked about the paper “Advertised Technologies Identifying Adoption of Emerging Technologies in Online Job Postings”. Ciarli and his co-authors used online job vacancy and patent data to examine the adoption of 40 emerging digital automation technologies in the EU and the UK. They found significant variation in technology adoption across countries, industries and occupations. They also found that technologies are adopted in bundles, showing the value of looking beyond just AI. They also found that only a few of the technologies were associated with wage premia.
Chair: Ilda Durri (OSE)
Session 2 opened with a presentation by Elisabeth Felbermair (Arbeiterkammer Wien) on “Öko-Booster: Training Young Immigrants as Skilled Workers for the Energy Transition in Vienna”. She introduced the Öko-Booster project, which provides intensive vocational training to young people from marginalised backgrounds, particularly recent immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, with a strong emphasis on recruiting young women. The initiative addresses Vienna’s growing need for skilled workers in the energy sector while promoting gender equity and social inclusion. With its innovative approach, the programme holds promise as a model for similar green transition efforts across Europe.
Ursula Holtgrewe (ZSI) presented findings from her paper “Repair, Resistance, Transformation and What Lies in Between: How Social Innovations Articulate Megatrends and Navigate Social Policies,” based on six case studies from the WeLaR project. The research examines how social innovations address labour market and welfare state challenges in response to megatrends such as demographic change, digitalisation, and inequality. Key findings show that while some initiatives focus on labour market (re-)integration through personalised support, others aim for more transformative change by amplifying the voices of marginalised groups (e.g. migrant carers, asylum seekers). Despite varying goals, all initiatives share flexible, needs-based approaches and highlight the need for policy systems capable of learning from and integrating these innovations.
Angela Ulrich (IAB) discussed her paper “Career Guidance in Working Life as a Socio-Political Approach to Adapting Professional Qualifications to Transformation: A Qualitative Stakeholder Study”. The study examines Germany’s Vocational Guidance in Working Life programme and its role in helping workers and companies navigate economic and technological change. Her findings show that while larger firms actively support upskilling, smaller companies often depend on external help, especially in structurally weak regions. Barriers like cost, poor prior learning experiences, and unequal access limit retraining, particularly for low-income and less-educated workers, potentially deepening labour market inequality.
Chair: Karolien Lenaerts (HIVA-KU)
Mantej Singh Pardesi (Maastricht University) started the session with a presentation, “Technology, Capital Vintages and Training – Role of Capital Investments in a Firm’s Skill Formation Strategy” exploring how firms’ investments in new technology affect their decisions to provide training to workers or to hire new employees. The study shows that technology-complementary investments, rather than purely technology-specific ones, are the primary drivers of increased labour demand. These investments lead firms to scale up hiring and training across all skill levels, resulting in an upscaling rather than an upskilling of the workforce. The findings suggest a learning-by-doing dynamic, where the introduction of new capital vintages prompts firms to adjust their workforce by hiring and training to create an optimal skills mix. These findings underscore the crucial role of vocational training and apprenticeships in helping firms successfully integrate new technologies into their production processes.
Next, Roman Klauser (RWI) discussed his paper “The Rise of Digital Technologies and their Impact on Demand for Labor and Skills”. Klauser’s presentation analysed how the diffusion of digitalisation shaped labour and skill demand in German firms between 2017 and 2022. Using online job vacancy data and a COVID-times’ natural experiment, he demonstrated that firms adopting new technologies, especially AI, have driven the post-2020 rebound in labour demand and shifted skill requirements from analytic to interactive capabilities. In contrast, less technologically advanced firms have increased their demand for analytic skills.
Alireza Sabouniha (Universität Innsbruck) talked about the WeLaR paper “Offshoring, Technological Change, Labour Market Institutions and the Demand for Typical and Atypical Employment in Europe”. He examined how the megatrends affected employment patterns across ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU member states from 2009 to 2018, with a focus on typical versus atypical employment. The findings reveal that offshoring reduced typical employment in manufacturing but boosted atypical employment in services, while technological advances, especially in communications technology, increased total employment mainly through rising atypical work. Robotisation displaced labour, particularly in typical roles and especially in ‘old’ EU countries, with employment protection legislation moderating these effects and shielding some jobs while amplifying displacement in others.
In the final presentation, Ekaterina Prytkova (University Côte d’Azur) presented the study “The Employment Impact of Emerging Digital Technologies”, which investigates how digital technologies affect employment across industries, occupations, and skill levels in Europe. Using a novel approach to link patents with job classifications, she introduced the TechXposure database and applied a shift-share methodology to analyse regional employment effects. The findings reveal a nuanced impact: while digital technologies overall boost employment, they do so unevenly. Low- and high-skilled employment increases, while middle-skilled employment declines. Labour-saving technologies benefit high-skilled jobs but displace low- and middle-skilled ones, whereas labour-complementary technologies support low- and middle-skilled employment but may reduce high-skilled roles.
Chair: Piotr Lewandowski (IBS)
Jessica Wiest (IAB) opened the session with a presentation on “Wages in the Green Transition”. The study explores whether environmentally friendly (“green”) jobs offer higher wages, what drives wage differences between green and non-green occupations, and how worker mobility shapes wage trajectories. The findings reveal no clear green wage premium; jobs requiring green skills do not offer significantly higher wages than others. While wages differ across occupations based on their environmental profile (green, brown, or neutral), there is also considerable variation within each group. This could be partly explained by individual characteristics such as gender, education, and the technical nature of tasks, including how routine they are. The lack of a wage incentive may make green jobs less attractive, potentially slowing the green transition.
Cesar Barreto (OECD) discussed the paper “The ‘Clean Energy Transition’ and the Cost of Job Displacement in Energy-Intensive Industries”. Barreto analysed the costs of job displacement in energy-intensive industries across 14 OECD countries, focusing on sectors such as energy supply, heavy manufacturing, and transport. His findings show that workers displaced from the energy supply and heavy manufacturing sectors face greater earnings losses than those from other sectors, mainly due to lower re-employment wages, job instability, and difficulty in finding new jobs. These outcomes are linked to the characteristics of displaced workers, who are often older, less skilled, and previously employed in high-wage firms, highlighting the challenges of transitioning labour in carbon-intensive industries.
Nicola Gagliardi (Université Libre de Bruxelles) discussed “The Productivity Impact of Global Warming: Firm-Level Evidence for Europe”. Gagliardi’s presentation examined how rising temperatures affect firm productivity across 14 European countries by combining firm-level financial data with detailed weather information. The results show that higher temperatures significantly reduce total factor productivity (TFP), mainly by lowering labour productivity, while capital productivity remains unchanged. The negative effects are strongest for firms in outdoor sectors like agriculture and construction, as well as in manufacturing and blue-collar-heavy industries, particularly in temperate and Mediterranean regions.
Toon Vandyck (KU-Leuven) closed the session with the presentation “Amplifying Rigidities: Revisiting Economic Impacts of Climate Policy Under Imperfect Labour Markets”. He demonstrated an enhanced general economic model, improved by incorporating different types of jobs and wage rigidities, to better understand how globalisation, automation, and decarbonisation affect workers. Applying the model to EU and global climate policy scenarios reveals that wage rigidities increase the cost of climate policies, exacerbate differences between occupations, and impact countries’ competitiveness.
Chair: Laurène Thil (HIVA-KU)
Fabrizio Pompei (UNIPG) kicked off the session with a presentation titled “Reforms and In-Work Poverty in the EU”. Pompei looked into the growing issue of in-work poverty in the EU, where an increasing number of workers experience poverty or deprivation despite being employed. Using EU-SILC data from 25 countries between 2006 and 2018, the study analysed how changes in family policies, labour market institutions, social protection, and product market regulation impact in-work poverty across different demographic groups. The findings show that reforms in family policies, especially those supporting households with children, are most effective in reducing in-work poverty by boosting work intensity and earnings.
Marko Vladisavljević (University of Belgrade) discussed “Income Inequality, Voting, and Preferences for Redistribution in Europe”. He examined European citizens’ preferences for redistribution (PFR) over time, particularly around the 2008 economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, using data from the European Social Survey across 31 countries. Vladisavljević found that PFR rose after the 2008 crisis but declined following the pandemic, suggesting that large-scale government interventions may reduce demand for further redistribution. The study also shows that PFR are shaped by income, personal values, and trust in institutions, and that these preferences strongly influence voting behaviour – though ideological leanings and attitudes toward migrants can lead individuals with high PFR to support right-leaning parties.
Pol Barbé (HIVA-KU), in his presentation “Measuring Investment in Education to Advance Social Investment in Europe”, explored the crucial role of education in promoting social justice and economic development. To better capture the scope and intensity of educational investment, he introduced a new indicator, Education Investment Effort (EIE), which combines public spending per beneficiary with participation rates. His analysis revealed significant variation in EIE performance across EU countries. Nations with higher GDP and lower levels of inequality generally perform better, with Northern and Central European countries leading, while Eastern and Southern European countries tend to lag behind. These findings highlight the importance of education in sustaining Europe’s social investment state and underscore the need for more comprehensive metrics to inform social investment policies.
Jaewook Lee (Universiteit Leiden) wrapped up the session with a presentation of his research: “How Does the Macroeconomic Context and Employment Prospects Affect Support for Welfare Chauvinism? Evidence from a New Survey”, conducted within the TransEuroWorkS project. He investigated how macroeconomic conditions and individual motivations influence welfare chauvinism – the belief that immigrants should have limited access to welfare benefits. Using a large-scale experimental survey across 15 European countries, Lee’s study tests how people respond to different economic outlooks framed through egotropic (self-interest) or sociotropic (societal concern) lenses. The results show that macroeconomic conditions, such as economic growth, do not significantly reduce welfare chauvinism and may even reinforce it among individuals who feel economically “left behind.” Instead, individual-level factors like education and income are more consistent predictors of welfare chauvinistic attitudes. To effectively address these attitudes, policies must go beyond promoting growth and tackle deeper insecurities about future economic stability.
Chair: Ursula Holtgrewe (ZSI)
Ilse Tobback (HIVA-KU) discussed her paper “Telework Preferences Among Students and New Entrants to the Labour Market: A Stated Preference Experiment”. Tobback was interested in why young employees engage less frequently in telework compared to their older counterparts. Using a discrete choice experiment, she investigated how varying levels of remote work, workplace interaction, and salary affect job attractiveness, revealing the trade-offs that young job seekers are willing to make. Preliminary findings show that access to telework significantly increases job attractiveness, with workers willing to forgo an average of 7.7% of their net monthly wage to gain remote work options. The strongest preference is for the first day of telework. Women, currently employed individuals, and those who already have a teleworking option show the highest willingness to accept lower pay, while strong workplace social capital slightly reduces the appeal of remote work.
Jarne Heylen (KU-Leuven) presented “The Impact of Telework Modalities on Psychosocial Risks in the Digital Age: Revealing Trends and Socio-Demographic Disparities”. Heylen investigated how the rise of telework, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has affected psychosocial risks for employees across the EU27, using data from the European Working Conditions Survey (2015 and 2021). The research found that telework has increased across all demographic groups, but not all employees were equally affected: women and those aged 35-55 face higher levels of psychosocial risks such as work intensity, work-life interference, low social support, and limited job control, while older workers (56+) and those with higher education face fewer risks.
