Talent, not capital, will be the key factor linking innovation, competitiveness and growth in the 21st century. More than a third of employers globally reported facing difficulties in finding talent last year and nearly half expected talent shortages to have a negative impact on their business results. Yet the world’s pool of latent talent is enormous. To unlock it, governments, business leaders, educational institutions and individuals must each understand better the global talent value chain. Business, in particular, must re-think its role as a consumer of ‘ready-made’ human capital to proactively seek out, engage and develop people’s potential. Better data and metrics are critical to this undertaking.

The Human Capital Report provides one such tool: the Human Capital Index. The Index quantifies how countries are developing and deploying their human capital and tracks progress over time. It takes a lifecourse approach to human capital, evaluating the levels of education, skills and employment available to people in five distinct age groups, starting from under 15s to the over 65s. The Index covers 124 countries, representing between them 92% of the world’s people and 98% of its GDP. It measures present performance against an ideal benchmark, and offers insight into how well a country is positioned for deploying talent in the future. In addition to the Index, the Report provides comprehensive information on the talent base in each country, including information on education levels of the employed, unemployed and the inactive members of the population as well as the specific qualifications of the latest entrants to the workforce.