Shushanik Papanyan

If you ask scientists in the field of artificial intelligence when they expect fiction to become reality and robots’ intelligence to exceed that of humans, they would likely say it’s right around the corner, sometime between 2030 and 2050.

If you were pressed to name the skills that are earning a premium in today's job market, you'd likely list software-coding or data analysis. You wouldn't be wrong. But we've found that skills like cognitive and social intelligence, entrepreneurial and leadership skills, the ability to adapt and innovate — skills that can't be automated, in other words, at least not yet — are also earning a premium. And that is good news for low-skilled workers who may be fearful for their futures in a world of unrelenting technological change and globalization.

Alarming numbers of both men and women of prime working age (25-54 years old) have been exiting the labor force. There were 4.3 million more prime-age working people who opted out of the workforce in 2016 compared to 2000. The number of males age 25-54 not in the labor force has been increasing since the late 1970s, but the same couldn’t be said of females until 2000. What is behind this historic break in the female labor force trend? To properly analyze the female labor force, it needs to be separated into different cohorts — married vs. unmarried, with children vs. without — since each of these groups exhibits different employment patterns and wage change.