The visit to Athens by Muriel Pénicaud, former French Minister of Labour and internationally acclaimed photographer, as part of the Applied Franco-Greek Dialogues, touched on a topic that has been widely discussed in recent years—though not always in a focused way. That topic is the future of work. Not in some distant and vague future, but in the years immediately ahead of us.

In our extensive conversation with Muriel Pénicaud, we learned, among other things, that one billion jobs will either change radically, disappear, or be transformed, and that the skills acquired today no longer have a useful lifespan of 30 years—or even 10 years—but rather... two. The world of work is being reshaped by demographic change, artificial intelligence, the green transition, and profound shifts in the organization of work itself on a global scale.

Interview by Antonis D. Papagiannidis

(Published in Economic Review - October 2025)

The Unknown Future of Work

Everyone agrees that, in the field of work, “everything will change.” In fact, everything has already undergone major changes. But more specifically, what does that statement mean?

Yes, first of all, we have said that the future of work depends on how we shape it. There are major determining factors that run deep and are already given realities: (a) demographics, (b) the impact of AI/artificial intelligence, (c) the ecological transition, and (d) changing relationships in the workplace. However, how the final outcome takes shape depends on businesses, trade unions, individuals, governments, and institutions.

So the outcome is not predetermined?

The issue is how these changes will be managed. Let us not deceive ourselves: we are living through—and will continue to experience—the deepest and fastest transformation in the world of work since the beginning of humanity. While the major trends are unavoidable, there remains considerable room for policy choices regarding how these changes are incorporated into people's lives and into the functioning of societies.

In other words, we still have room to respond.

Look, work has never stopped changing—especially over the past twenty years. The internet transformed the workplace, the global division of labor continues to evolve, and women's participation in the labor market has changed dramatically.

And Covid played its role too, of course.

Absolutely. Covid shook the system and accelerated changes that were already underway. Life after Covid is different from life before Covid. Yet this is where a danger emerges: if we do nothing—if we simply wait to see whether “the sky falls on our heads”—then we will merely endure whatever happens. The resulting evolution, however, will be chaotic.

Why chaotic? How so?

Because the intensity and speed of the changes will overwhelm us. Consider this: one billion jobs—over a ten-year horizon, though the process is already underway—will be created, eliminated, or transformed. Even if transformation accounts for the majority of these changes, the impact will still be enormous. In developed countries, between 50% and 80% of jobs will be affected. These are not strict forecasts, but combining data from the IMF, OECD, World Bank, and others leads us to that order of magnitude.

Let me put it in a way that may be easier to grasp: approximately 65% of our children—that is, two out of every three young people—will work in professions that do not yet exist in a defined form today.

In other words… a journey into the unknown.

Tomorrow’s professions may contain elements of jobs and activities we already know—and that is almost certain. Nevertheless, they will be professions that do not currently exist in the form they will ultimately take.

So the question becomes how people should prepare themselves for those future professions.

Exactly. This opens up the enormous issue of education and training for the jobs of tomorrow. We must ask what kind of educational system is needed, how it should function, and for whom. The new element, in my view, is that this is a global development occurring on an unprecedented scale and at unprecedented speed.

Imagine it technologically: it is as if humanity had invented the printing press, the steam engine, and the internet simultaneously rather than over the course of five centuries. That is the challenge before us. It is not the first time humanity has had to respond to accelerated change, but the convergence and compression of developments today are extraordinary.

Humanity has managed to absorb major changes before and eventually overcome the shock—but not without difficulty!

Back then, there was time available. Even so, adaptation was far from easy. The human and social costs were significant. Today we face an additional element of uncertainty, but also room for maneuver.

All of this is unfolding within a particularly uncertain and pressured geopolitical environment—one that will affect all four of these major drivers, accelerating some developments while slowing others. Regarding demographics, we Europeans often fail to grasp that the global population will rise from 8 billion to 10 billion people before eventually beginning to decline—assuming there is no massive pandemic, catastrophic war, or comparable climate disaster.

How Demographics Work

So up to this point, something relatively predictable.

Yes, but note that eight out of every ten people on the planet will be African or Asian. Africa’s population will more than double, and Nigeria will become the world’s third most populous country, after India and China, by the end of the century.

China, meanwhile, is entering a phase of demographic decline. India will eventually become twice as populous as China. All of this carries enormous geopolitical consequences, with obvious implications for the global division of labor and for how work will evolve within the world economy.

How do the countries you mentioned view these developments?

China is particularly concerned. For decades it experienced a population explosion—to the point of implementing the one-child policy. Now, however, rising living standards have reversed the trend, and the country is encouraging families to have a second child.

But education is expensive, women are entering the labor market in large numbers, and very few countries have created conditions that allow women both to build careers and raise families—while asking them to do both between the ages of 25 and 40.

As a result, every country that reaches a certain level of development sees fertility rates decline. Africa remains different, although there are major differences from country to country. Still, today, one out of every two Africans is under the age of twenty.

In Other Words, Takeoff…

Exactly that: takeoff. With all the opportunities and risks that come with it. And somewhere along the way, we will also see migration...

However, in the northern part of the planet—“the North” being a simplified term—across Europe, America, Japan, Russia, and now China as well, demographic growth is already slowing down. France, since I come from there, is among the last countries to have seen its fertility rate fall to 1.7 children per woman (over the past two or three years). But Germany, Italy, and Spain have been at 1.2–1.3 for years. The same applies to Japan. And Greece is also experiencing a significant decline in birth rates.

At the same time, life expectancy continues to rise—not everywhere, but generally speaking this remains the trend. This is good news for everyone. Yet it also has major implications for the transformation of our societies. There are more retirees and fewer young, economically active people. And—to bring the discussion down to the level of work—we are going to face shortages in human resources.

Or we will have to work until a later age...

Exactly. We will need more older people to remain in the workforce, as well as more women. That said, women's participation in the labor market varies enormously from country to country. It is highest in highly developed nations, where women have both the freedom to choose and the support structures that enable them to work. It is also high in very poor countries, where women often occupy the lowest positions in the labor market. In most other countries, participation rates fall somewhere in between.

This is where the need for labor migration comes into the picture. When the North needs people and the South lacks the means to educate and then employ its population, we will inevitably witness a movement driven by supply and demand...

Labor Migration

And what about politics at this level? Politicians?

There will certainly be political movements that resist this trend; indeed, that is exactly what we are witnessing today. But there will also be policies that encourage labor migration and provide the necessary accompanying measures.

Yet even if—let us call things by their name—we close borders in many regions, the force of the imbalance between labor supply and labor demand may generate chaotic developments and may lead to illegal practices. Ultimately, however, labor migration cannot be prevented.

Put differently: economies around the world cannot function without labor migration. Take the United States as an example. The abrupt shift in policy under President Trump since the beginning of this year, and the expulsion of large numbers of migrants, created problems for the harvests of many agricultural products—migrants were the people picking fruits and vegetables.

In France, meanwhile, 37% of hospital doctors are migrants—highly qualified professionals, but migrants nonetheless. Another 30% of kitchen staff are migrants as well. Many of our leading chefs are immigrants. I see no reason why a similar situation would not emerge in Greece.

But is this realization reaching public opinion?

No. At least not sufficiently. People tend to lump everything together: migration, asylum claims, labor migration, illegal immigration, family reunification. Yet these are not the same thing.

I do not overlook—and no one can overlook—the fact that every society has a finite capacity to absorb newcomers. But all our societies are mixed societies. Greece has experienced this, France certainly has, and there is no need even to mention the United States. Japan may be one of the few exceptions.

The key issue is that, in the past, societies had more time and better mechanisms for integration. But labor migration in particular is an integral part of the response that will be needed to address demographic decline. The notion that everything will soon be done by robots is an illusion...

AI Takes Center Stage

And that brings us abruptly to the discussion about AI—Artificial Intelligence.

This is an absolutely fascinating field...

...although not one that is fully understood in its essence.

You know, through a series of lectures—and even through comic books about the future of work—I have tried to continue approaches that we promoted within the French government, as well as lessons I learned through my experience in business and diplomacy [Note: as France’s Permanent Representative to the OECD].

Why? Because in our democracies we need to make choices, and making choices first requires understanding the subject, the problem, and the challenge.

Back in 2019, we introduced a reform of France’s apprenticeship system aimed at promoting lifelong learning. Why? Because we could already see the coming “skills battle” that would reshape the occupational landscape.

At that time, people were already talking about AI, but the discussion had not yet spread widely among the public. Only when ChatGPT arrived did the ground truly begin to shift.

Yet ChatGPT itself is little more than the rough draft of what is now emerging through Generative AI and what is likely to unfold over the next decade. Every two months, another major breakthrough seems to appear.

And it is precisely here that room for meaningful choices emerges.

But are there really choices to be made?

There are many different ways these technologies can be used. Yet we must keep one fact at the forefront: this development is going to profoundly disrupt the world of work. Every company, wherever it is located, will be affected.

Perhaps the most important aspect is that the jobs likely to be affected first this time are white-collar jobs, not blue-collar ones. Believe me, after the relocation of industrial activity to Southeast Asia that we witnessed in previous decades, this will shake the economies that—like France’s—have become predominantly service-based.

You may be experiencing something similar in Greece, albeit in a different way. Service-sector workers will be affected: employees, executives, managers, and people with specialized skills.

Take healthcare as an example. AI is likely to bring major advances on three different levels.

First, in research, through access to billions of data points—for example, enabling earlier detection and prevention of cancers or degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Second, through unprecedented precision in imaging and targeted therapeutic interventions. Patients will be able to receive diagnoses and potentially treatments much earlier.

Third, in the operation of hospitals themselves.

A particularly interesting example comes from a hospital in Montreal, where logistics operations were fully automated: the transport and delivery of medicines, meal distribution, and linen replacement. Hospitals are, after all, genuine factories of such activities.

In addition, robots were assigned the physically demanding tasks of lifting and repositioning patients in their beds, while administrative services were also automated.

As a result, the hospital not only eliminated a large number of time-consuming and physically exhausting tasks from its daily operations, but also reduced the workload of its staff by 30 percent.

A huge proportion.

Gigantic! They could therefore have said: “Great, we’ve reduced our costs by 30%.” Instead, they had the foresight to make use of recent findings from psychological approaches showing that human contact has a therapeutic effect—remember the Covid experience, when doctors and nurses could not touch patients, and the healing process suffered as a result: we are mammals, we need contact—and they brought a much larger share of their staff into direct contact with patients. For me, this is an excellent example.

At least in the healthcare sector...

In all hospitals around the world. But also much more broadly. “Where does the value of the human factor lie?” We automate everything that can be automated, but we make fuller use of the value of human interaction. We arrive at approaches that are not only more humane but also more effective: in our example, patients recover more quickly and spend fewer days in hospital beds.

But think of other examples as well: lawyers, for instance—how do they learn their profession at the beginning of their careers? They search for and analyze case law, whether in books or, nowadays, on screens. The same applies to accounting work, financial services, banks, and insurance companies. In all these areas, AI—which thrives where there are logical structures, data management, predictable outcomes, and repetitive processes—is changing the landscape. Yet sectors such as sales and advertising are not unaffected either: the chatbots that already guide us are AI tools. Most advertisements in marketing are not particularly original, while voices, human figures, and even entire films of fairly advanced quality can now be generated. The examples are endless.

So, corresponding jobs will disappear.

Many will disappear, while others will be reinvented. The question is which jobs can be facilitated, yielding gains in time, efficiency, and job satisfaction, and which will be emptied entirely of their content. Here, we need to examine every professional function separately and recognize the range of choices available.

All right, but who drives the discussion and who makes the decisions? Businesses? Entire industries collectively? The state? Some form of cooperation among the social partners?

What is actually at work is a continuously evolving process of planning. That process, however, requires foresight: it will not be a form of central engineering, but rather a continuous effort of monitoring, forecasting, and rapid response. In regulated professions, professional associations—lawyers’, doctors’, engineers’ associations—will need to become involved and determine where they want their professions to go. And, importantly, they will need to consider how tomorrow’s professionals should be trained. Governments certainly have a role to play. But every company must chart its own course. Large companies, meanwhile, will need to do this not only for themselves but also for the entire ecosystem around them: suppliers, SMEs, and others. Because let us not forget that the backbone of every economy, at least in terms of employment, is made up of small and medium-sized enterprises. This may be particularly true in Greece, but even in France, where we have quite a number of large corporations, SMEs still account for around 50%.

However, in the field of artificial intelligence there is, at least for us in Europe, also a question of sovereignty.

AI and Economic Sovereignty

What does that mean beyond Europe’s tendency to create regulatory frameworks?

It means: “Who gets to decide?” More precisely: “Who has the power to shape the direction of technology?” Today, the answer is China and the United States. Europe follows, but at some distance.

The Trump administration signed an executive order prohibiting the promotion of any AI regulation over the coming decade. What does that mean? It means that precisely in the areas where Europe is moving—mandatory disclosure of sources, preventing manipulation, cybersecurity issues, the use of social-control mechanisms (look at the case of China), facial recognition—there is already a confrontation underway. Yet we remain the world’s largest consumer market.

And consider this: Denmark, a country of five million people, has established the right of every citizen to retain intellectual property rights over their voice, face, and body.

Meaning?

Meaning the right to sue anyone who uses elements of their identity. In advertising. On social media for pornographic purposes.

And there is something else. Today, in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, the largest share of participants are Europeans or Indians. European talent is therefore not lacking—but it is over there. In France, we have now developed our own search engine—Mistral AI—which demonstrates that alternative approaches exist. More importantly, if we move forward with innovative regulation (look again at Denmark, acting as a laboratory), we will show that we do not accept the role of passive recipient. Of course, Europe’s decision-making process remains a challenge. The AI issue may, in this respect as well, act as a catalyst.

The Environmental Challenge

The same applies to the green transition, doesn’t it?

Globally, we are seeing a retreat. Not so much in Europe, of course. You know, China may continue to rely on fossil fuels, but 80% to 85% of the world’s solar panels come from there. The same is true for wind turbines. In the United States, by contrast, we are witnessing a complete reversal of climate policy: the stock exchange there now prohibits listed companies from publishing annual reports on ESG targets—environmental, social, and governance goals—including targets related to gender equality. In Europe, we proceed step by step: sometimes we move forward, sometimes we step back. Yet we remain engaged.

And so new employment opportunities are created?

The same pattern repeats itself: transformation, job creation, and job destruction. Consider Poland, where 80% of energy comes from coal. (The same is true in India, although the scale there makes change more difficult.) Poland decides to move toward renewable energy sources, but half of its coal-based energy production comes from a single region: Silesia. How do you turn a coal miner into a solar-panel technician? It is far from simple. Moreover, renewable-energy development will not take place in the same areas, making mobility an additional major challenge.

On the other hand, a host of new specialties are emerging: environmental lawyers, a whole spectrum of engineering disciplines, carbon-finance experts. And let us not overlook the fact that these professions attract young people because they provide a sense of purpose.

Environmentalism as an ideological project?

I believe that when it comes to reducing carbon footprints, coping with heatwaves, preserving biodiversity, and addressing warming waters, we can all see the consequences in practice. The Mediterranean experienced an extremely difficult reality this year. What I find encouraging is that major corporations and their value chains have already progressed so far in integrating these changes that, whatever governments may do, they cannot simply reverse course. Look at major construction groups, their materials and processes. Look at the energy sector itself. Look at a large part of the complex transportation industry. The shift was not made merely for appearances or greenwashing. There were genuine strategic realignments that cannot simply be undone.

And let us not forget that, with current technologies, around 15% of carbon emissions linked to future growth will come from AI itself, while 20% of water-resource consumption—resources that are already becoming dramatically scarce—is absorbed by this same sector. Hence the need for new solutions requiring less energy and fewer water resources.

In any case, the fourth major change concerns the transformation that is increasingly taking place in workplace priorities and relationships.

Changing Relationships in the Workplace

Where the Covid-19 experience accelerated the transformation.

There was already a significant shift underway, especially among younger people: the search for meaning in work and a better work-life balance. But everyone agrees that the pandemic broadened and accelerated these changes—not only among the young, but across all generations. People in their forties and fifties who found themselves confined to their homes began asking themselves: “Why do I get out of bed in the morning?” They reconsidered the meaning of their work. “What kind of life do I want?”

Of course, people need money to live. But there are also choices of substance. In France, we call this “voting with your feet”: many people choose to move into different activities, while others seek a different sense of purpose in the work they do.

Can you give an example, since you like examples?

Certainly. Oil companies, which once were magnets for highly paid workers, now struggle to attract talent. Today, you may no longer want to tell your children—or even your friends—“I work in the oil industry.” What I am saying may not apply to everyone, but the pool of candidates for such jobs has undeniably shrunk.

More broadly, however, companies today are faced with the need to explain and justify what they do, to communicate the content of their mission, and to articulate their purpose.

So they need to reinvent their image and their reason for being...
That too. In other words, they need to explain what the role of a company is beyond economic efficiency. Of course, a company must serve the interests of its shareholders, but also those of its customers, employees, and the community in which it operates. This is something that has gradually become more widely understood.

And who takes the initiative? The company itself? Social pressure? The individual employee? The state?
I would say, primarily, companies and individuals. In France, however, we passed legislation encouraging companies to publicly articulate their purpose—the mission they see for themselves. It is worth noting, in this context, that many people become frustrated when their work is transformed into an endless process of reporting in multiple directions and to multiple levels.

And why is that?
Because they feel they are losing their autonomy in the field. In France, doctors and nurses in hospitals explain that 30% of their time is spent on reporting. In large companies, many executives have to report to three different levels or chains of command. This is where the question of the meaning of work arises. Anglo-Saxons speak of “bullshit jobs”—jobs that make you feel like a cog in a distant machine. And this happens—mind you—even when you are an executive, or even a senior executive. It creates a sense of the “proletarianization” of managerial staff within companies. Ultimately, after years of education, recruitment processes, and career advancement, the highest criterion becomes whether, when you return home in the evening to your family and friends, you can explain what you actually did that day. How you—and your work—were useful.

So, in the end, it becomes a form of self-questioning?
Exactly. And let us not forget, to complete the circle, that these are the very people who are likely to be most affected by AI. At the same time, this is where the demand for work-life balance comes into play. In the past, we mostly heard this demand from working women; now men have joined in as well. Work is no longer automatically the highest priority. Family life stands alongside it, if not ahead of it. And steadily rising in importance are “everything else”: friends, leisure, entertainment, holidays. Among those under 35 in particular, but increasingly among others as well, work now comes second—or shares first place with family and personal time. This is why many young graduates refuse managerial positions: they do not want to work ten or twelve hours a day. They prefer a lower salary in exchange for greater freedom over their time and choices.

People increasingly want to be the ones who control their own time. More and more choose self-employment—so that they “do not have a boss”—or intermittent work, taking several months off each year. And, of course, remote work has become a fundamental expectation in the employment relationship.

So we are no longer talking about holidays or flexible working arrangements, but about an entire way of life.
Indeed—a consciously chosen way of life. Companies need to learn how to respond to it. It is worth noting that this phenomenon is also spreading among manual workers, who likewise no longer want to remain slaves to time but seek greater control over their own lives. It is a new phenomenon, bringing new expectations into the world of work.