"The so-called Industry 4.0 will make some work jobs based on physical effort disappear, while expanding the spectrum of jobs related to knowledge and creativity". This was stated by the advisor of the General Administration of Economics, statistics and research of the Bank of Spain, Juan Francisco Jimeno Serrano, during the workshop Transformation of work and inequalityorganized by the high school business and Humanism of the University of Navarra and BBVA.

"This change will require new models of training and professional preparation," he added. He also emphasized the fact that technological progress is so rapid that it is difficult to foresee what these substitution phenomena will be like in the future. "In fact, what we are already seeing is that the information technology revolution has been overtaken by the knowledgetechnology revolution," he said.

In his opinion, we must deepen our understanding of the processes of complementarity and substitution between work performed by humans and robots, "distinguishing between the performance of easily replaceable tasks and the development of activities in which technology cannot replace human beings".

Faced with this reality, the markets of work may produce striking polarities and paradoxes, the executive stressed: "On the one hand, it is conceivable that the human jobs that are less substituted are those that are more basic or those that are more sophisticated because they require special doses of creativity, imagination, etc.; at the same time, the aging of the population, which promotes the robotization of work to make up for the lack of young labor, may also end up slowing down innovation".

Of course, all these phenomena," explained Juan Francisco Jimeno, "will require profound changes in social policies, in the management of labor relations as we have understood them up to now, and in future macroeconomic and fiscal policies.

Concerns about unemployment, precariousness and the quality of the employment

Connecting this vision of the future with the current reality of the work market, and with the distortions that can occur in it, the economist of the Bank of Spain's General Administration de Economics, statistics and research , Laura Hospido, expressed her concern about the evolution of work incomes in relation to the levels of inequality. In this sense, the Bank of Spain researcher highlighted aspects that she considers worrying such as the high level of unemployment, the precariousness of work of young people or the leave quality of new jobs work.