Two areas of the labour market facing particular difficulties are ‘middle skills’ jobs – jobs requiring vocational qualifications or technical knowledge – and high skilled jobs occupied by graduates. While middle skills roles are experiencing difficulties in recruiting qualified workers, high skilled jobs are faced with a growing supply of graduates which may soon outstrip demand.
The video below shows Professor David Finegold discussing how we can grow high skilled jobs, and is one of two videos filmed following a roundtable event hosted by UKCES. Professor Finegold is currently Chief Academic Officer of American Honors and is a leading expert on skill development systems and their application to economic performance in the global marketplace, with expertise from a US and international perspective.
We have also posted a second video in this series, asking what do we mean by the 'middle skills gap' and why is it so important.
These videos mark 25 years since Professor Finegold originally published work on ‘high skill ecosystems’ – a period of time during which the structure of the labour market has changed significantly.
Growing high skilled jobs
In this video, Professor Finegold discusses the need to create more high skilled jobs to meet the growth in the supply of graduates. The ‘great doubling’ of graduates in recent years has led to a significant increase in the supply of high-skilled labour; the challenge is how to create enough ‘good jobs’ to ensure talent is not wasted. High skill ecosystems can play an important role in stimulating groups of businesses and universities to focus on matching supply to demand; other solutions include increased high performance working practices and changing corporate models to encourage more employee ownership.
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