Dr. Ekkehard Ernst

Dr. Ekkehard Ernst

President at Geneva Macro Labs & Future of Work and AI specialist at ILO, Geneva, Switzerland


Dr. Ekkehard Ernst is Chief Macroeconomist at the International Labour Organization, where he is responsible for understanding the Future of Work and analysing alternative paths for jobs and earnings to improve upon current trends. For this he uses both scenario techniques and quantitative predictive tools to uncover hidden trends and challenges for policy makers and business.

Dr. Ernst is also a member of EU parliament’s STOA advisory board. 

His work helps decision makers in understanding developments in skills and labour costs around the globe, providing them with the necessary intelligence to make effective long-term decisions. He is the president of Geneva Macro Labs.

He is a regular speaker at international conferences where he presents his latest insights and organises a yearly summer academy together with the International Training Center in Turin, Italy, where he gives hands-on advice on the tools he is using. Before joining the ILO in 2008 he worked at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Central Bank.

He has published extensively in the area of labour market trends and reforms and the impact of financial markets on jobs. Ekkehard Ernst has studied in Mannheim, Saarbrücken and Paris and holds a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.​