Drew Gardiner

The platformization of the creative industry has fundamentally transformed the landscape of creative work. This working paper examines the impact of digital platforms on creative workers, focusing on the dichotomy between platform control and worker autonomy. It focuses on both conventional artistic occupations like musicians and photographers as well as “new” professions like bloggers and podcasters. Although social media and streaming platforms have democratized access to global audiences and fostered unprecedented creativity, they also pose significant challenges. The precarious nature of platform-based work, characterized by irregular income, lack of job security, and the concentration of power in a few dominant platforms, or gatekeepers, raises concerns about exploitative practices and the stifling of creativity. This paper calls into question the performative nature of platform algorithms and governance structures to actively shape and influence the behaviour of creative workers, social norms and market dynamics through their design and operational logic. The paper advocates for comprehensive policies and strategies to harness the benefits of creative platforms while mitigating their downsides, ensuring fair compensation, protecting intellectual property rights, and promoting a sustainable and inclusive digital creative economy. Future research should explore definitions and measurements of creative workers on platforms, the long-term impact of platformization, and the transformative potential of artificial intelligence.

Over recent decades, the importance of studying labour market transitions has been recognized both amongst policymakers who focus on getting people out of unemployment and into jobs and academics who have used the increasing availability of relevant data to measure transitions and identify their determinants. At the same time, sociologists have developed a more holistic approach to studying transitions by applying a life course perspective, which takes a historical view of changes and involves transitions not only related to the labour market but also others that are central to both work and family life, e.g. shift from paid to unpaid work and exit from the labour force and into retirement. This more encompassing view of how the world of work interacts with other spheres of our lives is also in line with the challenges being posed by future of work trends, together with the impact of COVID-19. To bring a life course perspective to the analysis of labour market transitions requires different methodologies, and depends heavily on data availability, which is a major challenge in developing countries. For this reason, the choice of methodology needs to be based on an assessment of available data and the research/policy objectives. This paper provides some insights that will help further research on labour market transitions using a life course perspective. Further research in this area will help shed more light on the nature of transitions and how they are being impacted by not only the future of work drivers, but also the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, this analysis will provide important inputs in identifying the elements that make up decent labour market transitions, ones which reflect people’s agency and their ability to freely choose the steps of their course, in line with their personal values.

If young people are to benefit from the changing nature of the world of work, they need to be prepared, both in terms of skills attainment and level of ambition and aspiration. The aspirations of young people are essential to their human capital investment, educational choices and labour market outcomes. When realistic aspirations combine with an individual’s sense of agency and a belief that change can occur through their own effort, and given the pathways and tools to support achievement, success can be the outcome. Understanding aspirations is important when developing effective employment policies. If the career aspirations and life goals of youth are not considered, employment policies aiming to “match” skills with labour market opportunities may continue to fail young people. This report was undertaken as part of the ILO Future of Work project and aims to (i) review the literature on the concepts and drivers of aspirations; (ii) develop a conceptual framework that relates labour market conditions to aspirations; (iii) map the existing survey-based evidence on the aspirations of youth worldwide; and (iv) provide insights into how to improve data collection, research and evidence-based policy-making related to young persons aspirations.