This is not an exhaustive summary of the issues related to rethinking work, but instead it is intended to highlight key trends that are likely to continue having a major impact on work in the coming years. Most importantly this is intended to be a starting place for a rich discussion:

1. Rapid Change:The last 250 years of human history has been a period of unprecedented progress (Gordon, 2012). Experts suggest that we are no longer in an era where change is linear (Kurzweil, 2001). Instead, they argue, we are in an age where "change begets and accelerates change" (Drayton, n.d., p. 2). Some that the current pace of change has no historical precedent (Schwab, 2016), one expert suggests that technological change in particular may be taking place at "10 million times the speed of natural evolution" (Homer-Dixon, 2001, p. 251). A report by the management consulting firm Accenture suggests that based on current trends, 75% of today's industry leaders will be out of business by 2027 because they have not kept up with the pace of change (Nunes, Bellin, & Lee, 2016). In the same report 93% of industry leaders interviewed believe that their industry will be significantly disrupted within the next five years (Nunes et al., 2016). Canada's Mowat Center argues that a failure to modernize has already "eroded the civil service's ability to meet the needs of Canadians" (Jarvis, Mark, & Jarvis, 2016, p. 1). The organization Partnership for Public Service in the US argues that many systems in government are in fact designed to maintain the status quo(Fox et al., 2011)putting government at a disadvantage when it comes to adapting to change. Civil society also faces similar challenges when it comes to ensuring organizations adapt to change and have the flexibility and agility to respond to increasingly complex social and environmental problems.

2. Automation:Technology, and in particular automation, will most certainly be a major driver of change in years to come. In Canada, a 2016 Brookfield Institute report found that almost 42% of tasks performed by Canadian workers today could be automated using existing technology (Lamb, 2016). In this same report goes on to suggest that wide spread automation is likely to take effect in the next 10 to 20 years (Lamb, 2016). A global study by McKinsey suggests that half of current work activities are likely to be automated between 2035 and 2075 at the latest, depending on a variety of factors including technical feasibility and economic circumstances (Manyika et al., 2017). Activities once considered unlikely to be automated including those that require detecting emotion and cognitive capabilities are now readily expected to be impacted by automation (Manyika et al., 2017). Experts agree that this shift is unlikely to lead to mass unemployment, only 5% of occupations are predicted to be at risk of being fully automated (Manyika et al., 2017), but it will mean significant changes in how we do our jobs and what companies and industries look like (Lamb, 2016; Manyika et al., 2017). A stark example of this is that a US Department of Labor report outlines that 65% of today's school children, when they graduate, will go on to be employed in occupation that don't currently exist (Wolfe, 2013).

3. Aging Population:For the first time in history Canada now has more seniors over 65 than young people under 15 (Department of Finance Canada, 2016), the reality is similar for countries throughout the western world. An aging population is expected to have several impacts. First, as the proportion of the population who are aging out of the workforce rises, economists argue that we will have trouble maintaining a healthy economy and our current standard of living (Parkinson, Mcfarland, & Mckenna, 2017). The number of working aged Canadians for every senior is predicted to decrease and will be one of the largest decreases among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (Department of Finance Canada, 2016). Since a significant part of economic growth is due to how many workers there are, how many hours they work and how effectively they contribute, a decrease in the number those of working aged is expected to have a negative impact on economic growth for decades to come (Department of Finance Canada, 2016), some predict economic growth will be nearly halved (Manyika et al., 2017). Experts agree that finding ways to encourage more people to enter the workforce and remain in it for longer is one way of addressing the coming labour shortage. One positive reality of our aging population is that as we continue to live longer, we are also staying healthier for longer (Bloom, Canning, & Fink, 2011). Some believe that this will take some of the strain off social welfare systems and also allow seniors to contribute to the economy longer, a trend we are already starting to see. Older workers delaying retirement, out of necessity or a desire to keep working, is becoming more and more common. From 2006 to 2016, 93% of the growth in the US labour force was from workers ages 55 and older (Taylor & Pew Research Center, 2014). Adding new workers to the workforce by shifting our views around retirement will be important, however that alone will not be enough to address the coming labour shortage, especially after 2021 when for many Baby Boomers retirement will become inevitable (Department of Finance Canada, 2016). Besides encouraging delays in retirement, increased immigration and automation are also potential solutions, but it is likely that none of these will be enough to make up for the decline in productivity resulting from an aging population (Manyika et al., 2017).

4. Precarious work:Young people today are more likely that any other age group to be holdingdown multiple jobs, involuntary part-time or contractual work, jobs without benefits or jobs with no security or future (Expert Panel on Youth Employment, 2017). This has been termed 'precarious work' (Lewchuk et al., 2013). Precarious work has been on the rise since the 1980s (Expert Panel on Youth Employment, 2017; Lewchuk et al., 2013)and began being discussed as experts tried to understand what work would be like for Generation X (Barnard, Cosgrave, & Welsh, 1998), who were born from 1965 to 1980 (Pew Research Center, 2018). The intensity of the situation has only increased since then and it is showing no signs of letting up. In Canada, a higher percentage of Millennials, those born in 1981 until the 1996, (Pew Research Center, 2018)and Generation Z, who were born starting in 1997 until present day,(Pew Research Center, 2018)who are not full-time students work in part-time temporary positions now than did so in 2008 (The Expert Panel on Youth Employment, 2016). For many part-time work is not their first choice. Of those who were working part-time in Canada in 2015, almost half would have preferred to have a full-time job (The Expert Panel on Youth Employment, 2016).

5. Overqualified:Young people today are also more likely than in past decades to be overqualified for the work they do (Parliamentary Budget Officer, 2015). In 2014, 48% of Canadian university graduates aged 34 or younger were overqualified (Parliamentary Budget Officer, 2015)with 31.9% not being employed in their field of education at all (Carrick, 2017). For example, 20.4% of bartenders 25 years of age and older have at least a bachelor's degree, if not additional degrees (Glinski, 2015). Some experts suggest that at least one in five young people with a degree in Canada are in jobs that can be considered precarious (Expert Panel on Youth Employment, 2017). Being employed in entry level jobs also has the added risk that these jobs are most likely to be impacted by automation. A recent report suggested that automation is likely to disproportionately impact 15 to 24 year olds (Lamb, 2016), making the road to secure employment even more difficult for young people in the coming decades. Facing this kind of labour market so early in your career has lasting effects, experts call this 'scarring' and it can result in difficulty finding a job in one's field, inability to recover lost wages over the subsequent 10 to 15 years and an erosion of lifetime earnings (Fong, 2012; Glinski, 2015; The Expert Panel on Youth Employment, 2016).

6. Diversity & inclusion: Despite a growing commitment to gender equity, a 2018 report by McKinsey outlines that progress on gender diversity at work has stalled (Thomas et al., 2018). "Women are underrepresented at every level, and women of color are the most underrepresented group of all, lagging behind white men, men of color, and white women" (Thomas et al., 2018, p. 2). Factors that contribute to a lack of diversity in the workplace include a lack of managerial support, a lack of access to senior leaders, as well as everyday discrimination - sexism and racism and sexual harassment and the experience of being a token or an 'only' (Thomas et al., 2018). When it comes to young people starting off in the world of work, experts suggest that in the US that "even poor kids who do everything right don't do much better than rich kids who do everything wrong (Unicef Canada, 2016, p. 15). In the Canadian context, young unemployment rates are 20.5% higher for visible minority youth and 28.9% higher for indigenous youth, while they hover around 12 or 13% for young people as a whole suggesting that the road is a much tougher one for some segments of the young population (The Broadbent Institute, 2014).

7. Wellbeing: Another headwind that young people face, which may be as a result of living in this context of instability is the increasing rates of depression, stress and anxiety (Schrobsdorff, 2016; The Human Environments Analysis Laboratory, 2016), with close to one in five Canadian young people reporting having a mental health issue (Vuchnich & Chai, 2013)and Canadian young people reporting low life satisfaction despite being a country with high average life satisfaction ratings reported by adults (Unicef Canada, 2016). Similarly in the US there has been a decline in the self-rated emotional health of first and second year university students (Eagan et al., 2016). This trend may be closely related to the increasing desire by young people for work / life balance and prioritizing meaningful work over salary (Hillhouse, 2012).