A caring economy can yield a three trillion GDP boost
July 27, 2022
July 27, 2022
Over the last couple of years, workers have faced many obstacles both at work and at home. Many lost their jobs and struggled to find new ones, while supporting loved ones. Many also lost a family member or a friend. Parents and caretakers had to make tradeoffs every day. People made it through successfully when they had the most support. And this is what a caring economy offers to workers.
What is a caring economy? It is an economy where we recognize and support teachers, healthcare providers and childcare workers—people whose work is essential to our lives and work, and who enable our economies to function. The term “essential worker” reflects the reality that these people enable our social and economic engines to operate.
I know this firsthand. As a mother of four young children, reliable childcare is required for the day-to-day stability of our family. Over the past five years, I have been grateful—and fortunate—to benefit from the support of a primary caregiver and a range of other providers, who have all played a critical role in the development and well-being of my children. I honestly don’t know where our family would be without this village, whose support has also allowed me to pursue my desired career path. And this is what a “caring economy” can and should offer to all. In this economy, we can all value and care for the essential people that make our society thrive—our caregivers, teachers and healthcare providers.
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Yet, we often overlook social sector jobs and the people who do them, while the reality is that we all rely on them. And another reality is that fewer and fewer people want to do these jobs globally, creating talent shortages in the social sector. In contrast, demand for these jobs is growing, which creates an immediate need to increase the social sector workforce.
Through public and private collaboration and investment, we can meet this need and close the talent gap. Doing so would help ensure that we meet the needs of our societies, while also unlocking a multiplier effect that benefits economies directly and indirectly. Such an investment would pay for itself many times over in GDP growth, while creating new jobs to accommodate newly skilled workers and job transitions.
Created in collaboration with Accenture, WEF’s latest report—“Jobs of tomorrow: The triple returns of social jobs in the economic recovery”—uncovers what happens when we take the steps to create a caring economy.
In the US alone, a public-private $1.3 trillion investment (10% of GDP) in social sectors, spread between now and 2030, would result in a GDP boost and new jobs, specifically:
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As the world moves at the speed of the 4th Industrial Revolution, jobs evolve. For example, the “Jobs of Tomorrow” WEF report discloses an interesting fact: in the US, 60% of jobs in 2018 did not exist in 1940 (p. 8). Jobs will continue to change and people will need to change as well, embracing job transitions and new skilling opportunities.
I have a deep commitment to leaving people net better off and see three steps that organizations can take right now to make that happen:
Accelerated change has become a part of business and life. The one constant that holds true is to continuously invest in workers and build resilience through job quality, job transitions and job creation. We all need to do our part to leave the world a better place than we found it. Let’s collaborate to build an economy where social jobs—and the people who work them—are valued and receive attention and investments. This will start us on a path to recovery from the economic and personal shocks of the past few years.
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