Labour market experts have called for urgent policy reforms to help countries in the Global South prepare for sweeping changes driven by digitalisation, automation and shifting economic trends, warning that governments risk falling behind unless they adopt more forward-looking strategies.
The warning came during the Centre for Policy Dialogue’s (CPD) global webinar, Work in Flux: Foresight for the Future of Work in the Global South, where researchers and international policy specialists argued that traditional approaches to labour market planning are no longer sufficient.
Chairing the discussion, Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow at CPD, said rapid technological and structural changes were outpacing existing labour institutions and policy making.
“The world of work is changing. The labour ecosystem is changing, and the policies and institutions are struggling to keep pace,” he said, adding that conventional forecasting methods based on historical trends were increasingly unable to anticipate emerging challenges.
Presenting findings from CPD’s Bangladesh foresight study, Towfiqul Islam Khan, the organisation’s Additional Research Director, said researchers had identified 27 key drivers likely to shape employment up to 2035.
The study identified two major uncertainties: the expansion of the global digital economy and changing social aspirations within countries. Despite these uncertainties, researchers concluded that several long-term trends are likely to remain constant, including accelerating digitalisation, growing demand for higher-value services, persistent skills shortages, continued exposure to climate and trade-related shocks, and the increasing importance of agile public institutions.
The report recommends eight priority policy measures, including reforms to education and vocational training, lifelong learning programmes, employment-focused industrial policies, improved labour market data systems, expanded social protection for gig and platform workers, and targeted support for vulnerable workers during economic transitions.
The webinar brought together specialists from the International Labour Organization, Sri Lanka’s LIRNEasia, Argentina’s Sur Futuro Initiative and India’s JustJobs Network, who examined how automation, artificial intelligence and digital technologies are reshaping labour markets across developing economies.
Panel members agreed that education systems must become more responsive to changing employer needs and called for stronger partnerships between governments and businesses to prepare workers for new industries.
They also highlighted the need to modernise social protection systems and address the unequal effects of automation, arguing that technological progress should create more inclusive and decent employment rather than deepen existing inequalities.