Paper presented at the 2nd Meeting of the G20 Employment Working Group, 15-17 February 2017, Hamburg, Germany. This concept note discusses the mega-trends that are shaping the world of work and the challenges that they set for labour markets in G20 countries. Going forward, some of these challenges include the design and implementation of policies which will:

• Prepare young people for the jobs of the future by ensuring that they are equipped with the right type of skills to successfully navigate through an ever-changing, technology-rich work environment, and give all workers the opportunity to continuously maintain their skills, upskill and/or reskill throughout their working lives.
• Design labour market institutions (e.g. minimum wages; employment protection; health and safety regulations) which encourage employers to seize the opportunities offered by technological change and globalisation, while making sure that the risks are not borne disproportionately by workers in the form of low pay, precariousness and poor working conditions.
• Re-think social security systems to minimise the chances of people slipping through the holes by: (i) tailoring or adapting them to the new forms of employment; or (ii) decoupling them entirely from people’s work status and history.
• Strengthen activation frameworks to mitigate some of the inevitable adjustment costs of moving towards more globalised and technologically advanced economies by helping those workers who have been displaced by changing skills needs into a new job quickly.
• Promote new forms of social dialogue which allow tailored solutions to new challenges to emerge at the firm-level, while strengthening the voice of those workers who are increasingly working independently and separated by distance, language and legal context.