The current changes in the labour market could have potentially seismic impacts across the whole field of social mobility. They are having an impact on both the type of jobs available and their nature in terms of the tasks associated with particular roles, including the knowledgeintensive jobs. These changes fatally undermine the idea that politicians can engineer social mobility by raising the attainment of children and hence educate their way to a more equal society.

The combination of technology and ideology driving these changes is also changing the very nature of the occupational stratification systems on which the academic study of social mobility depends. The relationship between different types of job is what underpins occupational stratification systems. There need to be clear dividing lines between jobs. When these lines become blurred and when within job categories there becomes increasing differentiation in levels of skill required, tasks performed and income levels these stratification systems become more less meaningful as indicators or social division.

In this chapter, the rise of the ‘hourglass economy’ is explored – as the number of mid-range jobs disappears, this leaves us not with a linear form of occupational structure, but with something more akin to an hourglass shape. This concept, however, is a rather simplistic view of the economy – useful to capture some broad changes, but less useful at describing the complexity of the changes that are currently underway. If an accurate picture of the 21st-century labour market is to be portrayed, we may need more mixed metaphors.

These changes in the labour market strengthen the case for a holistic perspective on social mobility, but they also demand an understanding of the impact they are having. It is not just the type of jobs that are changing; it is also the very meaning of work that is under question. Success and progress via work are the bedrock of the present social mobility discourse, and these fundamentals must themselves be examined. Have we gone too far in the fetishisation of work? Is it desirable – or even possible – to step back to consider how we reposition work in relation to leisure and family? And if we do, what will that mean for social mobility?