5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The proposed conference session aims to bring together researchers examining the development of new metrics and measurement approaches to capture the rapidly evolving nature of work today and in the future. As the nature of work becomes more versatile and unpredictable, traditional metrics for tracking employment, skills, and job quality may no longer adequately reflect the realities facing workers and employers. There is a pressing need to rethink how we conceptualize and quantify key labor market phenomena. This session welcomes papers that introduce or demonstrate new methodological approaches for measuring trends in labor demand, the skills required for emerging roles, the multi-faceted nature of job quality, and their implications on the future of work. Papers may draw on various data sources and methodological approaches to shed light on these crucial dimensions of the labor market. The rapid advancement of large language models (LLM) has made possible new methodologies that can answer research questions that were previously unable to be answered. Thus, we most welcome papers that take advantage of these new opportunities.