CCAM effects on jobs and education, plans for skills that match the CCAM development, and prerequisites for employment growth (CCAM Partnership)

In order to make the socio-economic transition to CCAM fair for all, it is important to anticipate and mitigate potential job losses and job relocations due to CCAM deployment (including shared services) by ensuring that necessary skills are available and up scaled across a wide range of fields (along the entire CCAM value chain, from mobility operators, IT staff, drivers and non-drivers, to administration and management in transport). While concerns and future needs regarding the impact of automation on the transport sector have been identified and investigated[[ ECORYS: Study on exploring the possible employment implications of connected and automated driving. Final Report. Rotterdam, October 2020.]]^{,[[ European Commission: Study on the social dimension of the transition to automation and digitalisation in transport focusing on the labour force. Final report. Brussels, 2021.]]}, the potential for CCAM solutions to lead to job creation and job growth remains strong.

H2020 projects[[ WETRANSFORM, SKILLFULL, Pascal.]] and studies[[ In particular, work within the Wise-ACT COST project.]] have investigated the socio-economic impacts of automation across different transport modes (air, rail, road, waterborne) in order to provide policy recommendations that keep pace of this rapidly developing mobility transition.

Building upon the findings of these projects, the proposed action will aim to further anticipate and mitigate the impacts and rebound effects on jobs due to the deployment of road based CCAM systems and services, as well as boost innovation capabilities through the availability and upscaling of CCAM-specific professional skills. A wide range of professions and fields has to be considered. In addition, proposed actions should raise the awareness of the stakeholder community to better understand and anticipate upcoming socio-economic needs and requirements (especially in terms of employment opportunities and skills) and provide support through proactive planning.

The proposed actions are expected to address all of the following aspects:

• Develop a roadmap to support the socio-economic transition to CCAM and provide prerequisites for job growth, strengthened innovation capabilities, and short- and long-term demands for skills. Future spatial mismatches in labour demand identified by existing studies[[ ECORYS: ibid.]] should be taken into account. This roadmap should consider a wide range of CCAM-related professions, especially service related, and highlight any particularities between the transport of persons and of goods.
• Define and assess how expectations for job growth enabled by CCAM development and deployment can be achieved. Identify mechanisms and options to enhance innovation capabilities to develop competitive solutions. Social innovation[[ Social innovation concerns the development of new products, methods, and services for and with society to meet societal needs involving citizens, public authorities, business and industry, social partners and academia—the “Quadruple Helix”—in their design, development, and implementation to drive social change and market uptake.]] is encouraged.
• Analyse socio-economic and employment effects of CCAM across the full value-chain, such as income segregation, geographic dispersion, workforce overcapacity/shortages, considering various penetration degrees of mobility solutions with automation levels 3-5, taking into account:
  • Different operations in the transportation of people and freight.
  • Aspects induced by new emerging business models such as sharing schemes, e-commerce.
  • The role of road transport as an entry point into work-life and the effect of CCAM on the availability of entry-level jobs.
• Identify and assess short to long-term demands for updated skills (as well as skills and gender gaps) and enhanced knowledge regarding the full range of CCAM-related professions along its entire value chain, both for the mobility of persons and delivery of goods. This goes beyond jobs directly involved with vehicles (manufacturing, driving and operating) and should also include services (e.g. boarding assistance at travel end-points such as hospitals). This should include the development of educational plans and trainings[[ In this respect it would be advisable to establish, as appropriate, a link to project FAME funded under CL5-2021-D6-01-06 and to the future project funded under topic HORIZON-CL5-2024-D6-01-05 that are developing the EU- Common Evaluation Methodology (EU-CEM).]].
• Design schemes for the development and enhancement of skills to support future CCAM jobs and innovations. This is to be done throughout educational chains by looking at different use cases, paying particular attention to potential mismatches in skills and spatial demand and supply. Consider at least three use-cases for groups of people that are directly or indirectly involved in the provision of CCAM services. A variety of angles should be covered, including young persons, gender, private and public sector, passenger mobility and freight.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines including ethics, gender and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities. Involvement of labour market competencies is encouraged. Social innovation should also be considered to support the actions under this topic in order to match innovative ideas with social needs.

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, international cooperation is encouraged, in particular with Japan and the United States but also with other relevant strategic partners in third countries.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility’ (CCAM). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on results to the European Partnership ‘Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility’ (CCAM) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.