Table 3.

Critical themes in the future of work literature^a

Technological inevitability	Technology alone will not shape the future of work; social context dialogue and process are key (Winner, 1998; Perez, 2002; Little, 2008; Lemieux, 2014; Autor, 2015; Curry, 2015; Susskind and Susskind, 2015; ILO, 2017a; Creticos, 2018).
Young workers	Many children that entered school in recent years are projected to work with skills that do not yet exist. The demand for advanced cognitive and behavioral skills will increase and the demand for narrow job-specific skills will continue to decrease. (Krueger and Kuman, 2004; Council for Work and Health, 2014; Ederer et al., 2015; Cunningham and Villasenos, 2016; McGuinness et al., 2017; World Bank Group, 2019).
Older workers	Workers aged 55 and over (during the next few decades) will become one of the fastest growing segments of the workforce in many countries (ILO, 2018). Countries with higher rates of projected aging generally have larger proportions of older workers at risk of automation (Paton, 2014; Foresight, 2016; Basu et al., 2018; Harris et al., 2018; Healy and Williams, 2018; McGowen and Corrado, 2019).
Women workers	Women and men may experience technological job displacement differently since women traditionally perform more routine cognitive tasks. Women need to have more access to technology and training (Brussevich et al., 2018; World Bank Group, 2019).
Migrant workers	In the future, there is likely to be more than 160 million migrant workers globally. Migrant workers frequently experience increased rates of morbidity, mortality, and injury. (ILO, 2017b; IOM, 2017; Flynn and Wickramage, 2017; ESPAS, 2018).
Workers with disabilities	Future of work literature is linked to research focused on those living and working with disabilities. New technologies may both help and discriminate against persons with disabilities (Department of Work and Pensions, 2017; Kanady, 2018).
Time, work, and leisure	There is a general perception that the ‘pace of life’ is accelerating and social acceleration has been linked to shorter attention spans (Lorenz-Spreen et al., 2019). Time availability is an important determinant of work, leisure, and work–life balance (Karasek, 1979; Cooper et al., 2001; Meireles, 2005; Eurofound, 2012; Moore and Tenney, 2012; Rosa, 2013; Vostal, 2014; Eurofound, 2015; Wajcman, 2015; Kubicek et al., 2015; Ordonez et al., 2015; Whatley, 2018).
Social isolation and loneliness	Decentralized work may lead to social isolation and loneliness. Loneliness may have an impact on mortality equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per day (Rook, 1984; Murthy, 2017; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010; Jeffrey et al., 2017; Nemecek, 2018; Ozcelik and Barsade, 2018; McMillan, 2019; Patel et al., 2019).
Globalization	A new phase of globalization is likely but will still be a determinant of job loss (due to ‘off-shoring’), which is associated with adverse health effects (Benach et al., 2004; Kawachi, 2008; Dobbs et al., 2015).
Urbanization	In addition to worker safety and security indirect factors such as wage polarization, housing costs, and need for social services will be critical issues for how the future of work will be impacted by and impact urbanization (OECD, 2014; DuPuis et al., 2016; WEF, 2018a).
Climate-related factors	Outdoor work will be hotter. Working capacity of heat-exposed workers is expected to decrease, while deaths and illness in workers exposed to heat is expected to increase (Dunne et al., 2013; Kjellstrom et al., 2014; Schulte et al., 2016; Clayton et al., 2017; Maitre et al., 2018; Rigaud et al., 2018; Sylla et al., 2018; Cho, 2019; Dong et al., 2019).
Cognitive enhancement	Increased use of cognitive enhancing drugs is likely. Drugs that enhance cognitive capabilities (and that may also have physical effects) may be inappropriately promoted instead of work organization improvements (Dale and Bloomfield, 2016; MarketWatch, 2018).
Physical enhancement	Growing use of physical enhancements (such as exoskeletons) may increase the incidence of deleterious effects (Academy of Medical Sciences, 2012; Federici et al., 2015; Young and Ferris, 2017; Zingman et al., 2017; McGowan, 2018; Butler and Gillette, 2019; Hargreaves et al., 2019).
Worker monitoring	Wearable sensors or other monitoring technologies may result in violation of privacy and autonomy and lead to discrimination (Bandodkar et al., 2016; Moore, 2018; EU-OSHA, 2019; Zuboff, 2019).
Advanced manufacturing	Advances that involve changes in the process of manufacturing may present new hazards and old hazards in new settings (Hassall, 2015; Geraci et al., 2018; Pomeroy-Carter et al., 2018; Roth et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2020).
Hazardous exposures and disease	There are a vast number of chemicals in commerce and millions of workers with exposures to them (Calvert et al., 2012). Exposures may put them more at risk of occupational cancer may lead to occupational cancers in the future. There maybe a shift of exposures to developing nations. Also, physical, biological, radiological, and musculoskeletal factors also can be hazardous to large number of workers (EU-OSHA, 2007; Watanabe et al., 2011; Haagsma et al., 2012; Valencia, 2013; UNECE, 2015; Madhav et al., 2017; Fritschi, 2019; Wang, 2020; Siemiatycki and Rushton, 2020; Shearer et al., 2020).
Biotechnology and synthetic biology	Biological processes may become a major source of economic growth. Creation of new or altered life raises significant concern about potential health effects and ethical issues (Hewett et al., 2016; NAS, 2017; Howard et al., 2017; Gomez-Tatay and Hernandez-Andreu, 2019).
Sustainability	Many future workers may seek jobs that practice or address sustainability. Focusing on sustainability may be a new approach for advancing worker safety and health (OSHA, 2016). However, green jobs may have hazards (Brundtland, 1987; Bradbrook et al., 2013).
Political and economic factors	How societies organize and conduct themselves will favorably or unfavorably influence working conditions and the future of work (Walters and Wadsworth, 2014; Lippel et al., 2017; Chandy, 2016; Pyke, 2018; Kinder, 2019).

^aSee Supplementary Appendix III for discussion of each theme.