From the Editor

Down but Not Out

We drew our inspiration for this issue’s cover from Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rivera, a Mexican artist, was commissioned in 1932 to paint the 27-panel visual epic as a tribute to the city’s assembly-line workers, scientists, doctors, secretaries, and laborers, many of whom were struggling at the time to keep their jobs amid the devastation of the Great Depression.

Rivera’s murals are complex and sparked both controversy and admiration. But something about the mural format—the sweeping canvas, the openness to public inspection—caught on. In the United States, artists supported by government agencies, such as the Works Progress Administration—part of the government’s “New Deal” aimed at getting Americans back to work—fanned out to paint hundreds of murals in post offices, government buildings, and other public spaces. Many of these murals celebrated the worker, who had taken a hard shot to the jaw and was down but not out.

Our aim with this cover of F&D (painted by American artist Richard Downs) is to pay tribute to the workers of our era—many still struggling to find jobs in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008—and to capture on the magazine’s first-ever foldout cover many of the forces shaping the jobs landscape in 2015 and beyond: technology, immigration, trade, and education.

This issue’s sweeping view of the future of work in the global economy takes a variety of angles. IMF economist Prakash Loungani leads...