The world is fretting about the looming “skills gap” and its potential impact on economic output. Again. “The [UK] government, of course, is well aware of this threat,” wrote the Financial Times — in 1968.
This is a chronic problem, in other words. But it is entering an acute phase, thanks to the pandemic. Like coronavirus, the skills gap is mutating, in potentially dangerous ways.
The first and most obvious fissure in the future of work is still the one identified in that 1968 report: a dearth of workers (engineers, in that case) with the skills for the jobs of the future. Today’s problem is summed up by a new report from the World Economic Forum: 40 per cent of the core skills in the average job will change in the next five years, it concludes.