In 1978, a record 72% of all teenagers were employed in July, the peak month for youthful ice-cream scooping, shelf-stacking and burger-flipping. But for two decades the traditional summer job has been in decline, with 43% of teens working in July 2016. The Economist explores what has changed.

U.S. businesses have every incentive to adopt labor-saving technologies, replacing factory workers with robots and desk jobs with smart software. In some areas, such as finance, machine decision-making is advancing quickly. In others, there are obstacles. Overall, while the penetration of automation in the economy is happening, it is taking place at a slower pace than futurists expected.

The UK government has published a review into working lives and how they’re changing – a big part of that is looking at the way companies like Uber and Deliveroo employ people. Gig workers currently operate somewhere between being fully employed (which would mean getting paid sick leave, holiday pay, etc) and independent contractors (which would mean they’d get none of that). This review will create a whole new category of workers, called ‘dependent contractors’.

During the decades after World War II, a growing share of U.S. and Canadian women participated in the workforce, boosting household incomes and national production, while opening new opportunities for women themselves. Then in the late 1990s, something changed. Female workforce participation began slipping in the U.S. while it kept marching higher in Canada. Our northern neighbor holds lessons for how America can fill an untapped economic potential.