Digital trade and labour markets in the United Kingdom

Sebastian Benz, Alexander Jaax and Elisabeth van Lieshout

No 284, OECD Trade Policy Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: The contribution of services in the United Kingdom (UK) to exports, value added, and employment is one of the highest amongst OECD countries. UK employment also depends strongly on exports of digital services: in 2019 the jobs of around 3.2 million domestic workers in digital services sectors were embodied in UK exports. Median wages in these services are considerable higher than wages in other sectors of the UK economy. Econometric analysis shows that strong growth of employment in digital services generates multiplier effects benefitting local economies in the United Kingdom, with each additional digital services job creating around 0.3 jobs in the local non-tradable sector. Continued support for plurilateral and multilateral initiatives to dismantle barriers to services trade, including via the WTO Joint Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation, can help to enable more UK firms to take advantage of the potential for further growth in digital services trade. Improving the availability of training programmes and aligning curricula with the rapidly evolving needs of exporters of digital services is crucial to enable for workers to shift into sectors with growing labour demand.

Keywords: E-commerce; Multipliers; Services Trade; Wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E4 F13 F15 F16 J21 L86 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-lma and nep-pay
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:traaab:284-en

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