New labour market institutions will need to balance facilitating labour mobility and encouraging appropriate protections of workers in non-standard forms of employment that emerge in industries, as considered in the UK by the Taylor review of modern working practices. 30  Other issues range from technology solutions to improve matching to news frameworks data portability (including reputational histories). Each industrial revolution has eventually been accompanied by major innovations in enabling or educational institutions. The biggest issue may be how to institutionalise re-training in mid-career and to integrate it with the social welfare system. The time for a quaternary system of education, founded on the same principle of universality as primary, secondary and tertiary education may eventually arrive. There are also roles for retraining schemes, such as the UK’s Flexible Learning Fund  31  and the Singapore  SkillsFuture programme, which offers all its citizens aged 25 and over £ credit to pay for approved workskills related courses. Generous subsidies, of up to 90% for Singaporeans aged 40 and over, are available on top of this credit. According to SkillsFuture’s Chief Executive, the returns on that spending matter less than changing the mindset around continuous reskilling. An often overlooked but nonetheless critical element of the ecosystem is to build a financial sector consistent with the new economy. 30 31  Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/good-work-the-taylor-review-of-modern-working-practices. The Government has allocated £ through the FLF in Spring2017 budget to run pilot projects.

They argue that there has been little evidence, over the long term, of technological unemployment. After all, average employment and unemployment rates today th  are similar to those in the 18 century. 5  The First Industrial Revolution (1760 – 1840) saw the mechanisation of (mainly the textile) industry with the introduction of steam power, moving people from home-based to factory-based production in urban areas. The Second Industrial Revolution (1860 – 1914) was driven by the introduction of electricity to manufacturing, extending mechanised, assembly-line mass production to broader industries. The Third Industrial Revolution (1970 – 2000) was defined by the move from mechanical/analogue to digital, with widespread adoption of electronics from both the home and work environment. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2000 – current) anticipates the dawn of true Artificial Intelligence in light of advances in robotics, nanotechnology and quantum computing. 6 In the UK, intangible investment rose above tangible investment in the early 2000s, and stood at 11% as a share of output in 2014 compared with 10% for tangible investment. Investment in intangibles also exceeded that in tangibles in the US, Sweden and Finland [on average over 1999-2003], but not in other European countries including German, Italy and Spain. See Haskel, J and Westlake, W (2017), ‘Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy’, Princeton University Press; and Goodridge, P R, Haskel, J and Wallis, G (2016), ‘Accounting for the UK Productivity Puzzle: A Decomposition and Predictions’, Economica, Vol. 85, Issue 339.