The economic viability of remote employment and the demand for worker skills amid rapid digital integration

Abstract

The positive impact of the virtual labour market development is examined, its capabilities and capacity, as well as the annual effect of the introduction of flexible employment forms, are evaluated. In particular, the features of the Russian labour market, which is starting to use virtual forms, are analyzed: the structure of the areas of employment of remote workers is still narrow - IT, programming; sales finance, accounting; online employment; design; customer support services. This tendency was especially pronounced in the context of a pandemic that changed the attitude of people towards distance work. It is emphasized that in the near future, each employee will have to have digital skills for work and social integration. WEF identifies five separate groups of demanded skills: business, specialized industry, general and soft skills, technical basic skills, technical breakthrough skills. Despite the fact that communication and thinking skills are brought to the forefront, digital skills allow people to create and share digital content, communicate and solve problems, to learn, perform work and social activities in an effective and creative way as a whole. The high level of employees with digital competencies at different levels in the company will provide it with a number of competitive advantages. Neoclassical models that reflect the relationship between economic growth and the growth of human capital are considered. State support for investments in education, research and development, accumulating new knowledge can be considered as the most important endogenous growth factor.