A bit about me

I'm a researcher at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in Seville, where I coordinate a small team working on employment and skills. My research interests lie between economics and sociology, and I'm mainly interested in understanding how technology, institutions and economic structures shape the world of work.

In the last few years, my team and I have been running a research programme on how digital technologies are changing work in Europe — looking at automation, the digitisation of work processes, and the increasingly important phenomenon of platformisation and algorithmic management. This work has included some large-scale surveys, most recently the AIM-WORK survey on algorithmic management across all 27 EU member states.

Before joining the JRC, I spent several years at Eurofound in Dublin, working on projects like the European Working Conditions Survey and the European Jobs Monitor. And before that, I was at the University of Salamanca, where I did my PhD in Economic Sociology and taught for a few years.

My research interests include:

• – The division of labour and change in employment structures
• – Job quality and working conditions
• – Technical change, work and employment
• – Platformisation and algorithmic management
• – Wage inequality and income distribution
• – European labour markets and labour regulation

Some of the projects I've been involved in include the AIM-WORK survey (2024–2025), the European Jobs Monitor, the COLLEEM and AMPWork surveys on platform work, the European Working Conditions Survey, and the JRC-Eurofound tasks database. More details on these on the Data & Tools page.

Get in touch

If you'd like to get in touch — about research collaboration, policy questions, or anything else — the best way is email: Enrique.FERNANDEZ-MACIAS@ec.europa.eu