Urban labour markets post-pandemic

While the pandemic clearly accelerated the take-up of home working, it is unclear what the long-term consequences of this period will be for demands for labour and the nature of work in urban areas.

Digital footprints data, notably from online job adverts, have a role to play here but bring new challenges, not least in assessing quality and coverage, and in the extraction of useful information on the nature of roles being advertised.

Aims and objectives

This project aims to examine how the labour market is changing post-pandemic and responding to changing trends in the nature of work.

To this purpose we will use – and seek to link – datasets that allow us to address the following initial research questions:

• In what ways are changes in the nature and type of work in urban areas observed during the pandemic likely to ‘stick’ in the long run?
• Are some roles in the labour market experiencing more rapid and significant changes in the nature of work?
• How are the skills that employers need changing, and how is the nature of education and skill demand responding?

We will also explore how new and innovative datasets on labour market trends might be integrated with other datasets to better understand changes in geographical patterns of employment opportunities, long-term outcomes from education etc.

Researchers

Lead: Professor Graeme Roy
Team: Professor Julia Darby (Strathclyde), Professor Stuart McIntyre (Strathclyde)

Latest outputs

• Paper: Darby, J., McIntyre, S. and Roy, G. (2022) What can analysis of 47 million job advertisements tell us about how opportunities for homeworking are evolving in the United Kingdom? Industrial Relations Journal, (doi: 10.1111/irj.12375) (Early Online Publication)