Are young people overskilled or underskilled? (Blog)
English
ILO
The International Labour Organization is the tripartite U.N. agency that promotes Decent Work through employment, social security, labour standards and social dialogue. Its work on skills development is guided by the conceptual framework on Skills to improve productivity, employment growth, and development agreed in 2008 by representatives of Governments, Employers’ Associations and Workers’ Associations. Research, policy advice, and pilot projects and technical cooperation programmes to apply good practices in different circumstances across its 185 member States aims to boost the employability of workers, the productivity and competitiveness of enterprises, and the inclusiveness of economic growth. The ILO Secretariat in offices in 40 countries works with Ministries of Labour, employers’ organizations, and trade unions to integrate skills development into national and sector development strategies in order to better meet current labour market needs and to prepare for the jobs of the future; to expand access to employment-related training so that youth, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups are better able to acquire skills and secure productive and decent work; and to improve the ability of public employment services to provide career guidance, maintain labour exchange services, and deliver active labour market programmes.For more information regarding the ILO’s work on skills and employability go to: http://www.ilo.org/skills/lang--en/index.htm; for ILO/Cinterfor's Knowledge Management Plarform, see: http://www.oitcinterfor.org
Training quality and relevance
Youth employability
Globally, nearly 68 million young women and men are looking for and available for work, and an estimated 123 million young people are working but living in poverty. The number who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) stands at 267 million, a majority of whom are young women. Significantly, young people are three times as likely as adults (25 years and older) to be unemployed.
Skills development is a primary means of enabling young people to make a smooth transition to work. A comprehensive approach is required to integrate young women and men in the labour market, including relevant and quality skills training, labour market information, career guidance and employment services, recognition of prior learning, incorporating entrepreneurship with training and effective skills forecasting. Improved basic education and core work skills are particularly important to enable youth to engage in lifelong learning as well as transition to the labour market.
Promotional material
Presentations, discussion papers, meeting reports, promotional materials, videos, fact sheets, brochures and newsletters on skills development for employment.
This year’s World Skills Competition features 1,300 competitors, 100,000 visitors and 51 skills. The competition will cover a diverse range of vocational categories including mechatronics, information network cabling, floor tiling, patisserie, and plumbing just to name a few. The ILO, as a conference coalition partner, will be involved in two major activities of the Competition, the WorldSkills Conference and the WorldSkills Youth Forum which comes under the theme 'Skills strategies for a globalized world'.
Refocusing the debate on jobs and skills mismatch….
The ILO’s SKILLS branch will lead a conference session on the topic of skills mismatch that will consider not only what causes skills mismatch, but also to better understand the different types of skills mismatches, the labour market impact they have and their relative importance.
High and persistent levels of youth unemployment, together with job vacancies that remain unfilled, are often attributed to mismatches between jobs and skills. The debate frequently focusses on why employers are unable to fill the vacancies they have. But this is only one form of skills mismatch. The problems faced by employers are technically known as skills gaps or skills shortages (which are a form of skills mismatch), but how important are they compared with other forms of skills mismatch like over-education?
The point here is not to underestimate the importance of skills shortages, as nearly 50 per cent of all European firms report difficulties in recruiting higher education graduates (Eurobaromater survey, 2010), but the evidence that these shortages are to do with skills rather than employment opportunities and conditions is actually weak, and whether they have any effect on the performance or income of these firms is also not clearly understood.
One area that has received relatively little attention is the issue of over-education, which occurs when an individual possesses a level of education in excess of that which is required for their job. After an extensive review of existing research, Prof. Séamus McGuiness of ESRI established that a sizeable fraction of workers are in occupations that do not require as much schooling as they have acquired. Think, for example, about that taxi driver you encountered that holds a PhD, an example that points to a mismatch between jobs and skills.
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