It’s hard to keep up. Every week seems to bring a new wave of breathless commentary about AI and the future of work, often swinging between utopian promises of liberation and dystopian fears of mass unemployment. It’s a debate that, as the new European, Joint Research Centre (JRC) report “Work in the Digital Era” points out, has been recurring for a long time. But this report, which synthesises over seven years of detailed research across Europe, offers a refreshingly sober and evidence-based perspective.

In contrast to the fears over the impact of technology on employment, the JRC’s research concludes that the primary impact of the digital revolution, including AI, is not the widespread destruction of jobs. In fact, their analysis suggests that the net effect of automation on employment in recent decades has been “modest and frequently positive.”

So, if it’s not about a future of mass unemployment, what is the real story? The report argues that the most profound transformation is a qualitative one, centered on how work is coordinated and, more importantly, how it is controlled. To explain this, the authors introduce a simple but powerful framework, breaking the changes down into three main vectors: automation, digitisation, and platformisation.

Automation, the replacement of human labour by machines, is the one that gets all the attention. But the JRC finds that while it certainly transforms specific tasks, it mainly boosts productivity and leads to a reallocation of labour, not a net loss of jobs. The real story lies elsewhere.

Digitisation, the increasing use of digital tools in all work processes, is what the report identifies as the most consequential vector of change. This is where a central paradox emerges. While the economy is shifting away from routine occupations, the work within many high-skilled, non-routine professional roles is becoming increasingly routinised, standardised, and subject to digital control. Think of the endless digital paperwork, the constant monitoring through software, and the way creative or intellectual work is broken down into measurable, trackable tasks. This has led to a series of contradictory impacts: increased responsibility but reduced autonomy; more communication but also more social isolation; opportunities for upskilling alongside the reality of deskilling.

This leads to the third vector, platformisation. This isn’t just about the gig economy, which the report notes has stabilized as a marginal form of employment. The more significant trend is the spread of the logic of platforms—algorithmic management, digital monitoring, and constant surveillance—into traditional workplaces. The tools we use for everyday collaboration, from Microsoft Teams to Slack, are also tools for management, coordination, and, ultimately, control. The pandemic massively accelerated this trend, and there’s no going back. This “platformisation of work” is intensifying work, eroding worker autonomy, and creating a new, more intrusive and bureaucratised form of managerial control.

So, what does this mean for the future of work and the structure of our labour market? The report finds that the dominant trend in Europe is not “job polarisation” (the hollowing out of the middle) but rather “job upgrading,” with employment growth concentrated in higher-skilled jobs, largely driven by the expansion of public services. However, this is not evenly distributed, with capital regions benefiting far more than peripheral areas.

The implications for how we should approach AI are profound. The JRC’s work suggests that the key challenges are not technological but institutional and ethical. The effects of these technologies are not deterministic; they are shaped by regulation, policy, and collective bargaining. The real fight is not about stopping the robots, but about:

• Protecting worker autonomy in an age of algorithmic management.
• Pushing back against intrusive surveillance and the intensification of work.
• Ensuring that the benefits of productivity gains are shared and don’t just lead to more control.

This report is a crucial reminder that we need to shift the focus of our conversation about AI. Instead of asking “how many jobs will be lost?”, we should be asking “what will be the quality of the jobs that remain?” The challenge isn’t about managing mass unemployment, but about ensuring that the future of work is one that enhances human dignity and autonomy, rather than diminishing it in the pursuit of total efficiency and control. The technology is here, but the rules that govern it are still very much up for grabs.

About the Image

AI-enabled platform work and remote work are presented as activities that may help reconcile paid and unpaid labor, though this reconciliation often involves tensions. The image particularly touches on how these more precarious jobs impact mothers and people with care giving responsibilities. The image was created digitally using Procreate and Adobe Fresco. The inspiration for this piece stemmed from a reflection on how to visually represent multiple job holding (moonlighting) in contemporary societies, a situation deeply shaped by digitalisation. This image was selected as a winner in the Digital Dialogues Art Competition, which was run in partnership with the ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Digit) and supported by the UKRI ESRC.