The Times:
We must act now to prevent the skills gap becoming unbridgeable
24 January 2018
The Federation of Master Builders reports that “skyrocketing” skill shortages mean that there are not enough workers available in all the key construction skills. The Black Country Chamber of Commerce says that skill shortages have reached “critical” levels; they are high in manufacturing and have never been higher in services. The CBI said yesterday that, for manufacturers, more companies cited skills shortages as a factor restricting output than at any time over the past four decades. Research for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research shows why we should be concerned. The research, in collaboration with the Centre for Vocational Education Research, shows a worrying decline in the proportion of employed people undergoing training. Over the past ten to twelve years, the proportion of workers who have undertaken learning activities in the previous thirteen weeks has dropped from nearly a third to just over a quarter. The duration of training activities has fallen, too, and is typically less than a week.
Related publications
Industrial Strategy: building a Britain Fit for the Future. Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. November 2017.
Consultation for the “Building our Industrial Strategy” Green Paper. Steven McIntosh, Sandra McNally, Stefan Speckesser, Lucia Barbone, October 2017.
‘An analysis of the duration and achievement of apprenticeships in England’, Matthew Bursnall, Vahé Nafilyan and Stefan Speckesser, CVER Briefing Paper No.4, September 2017 http://cver.lse.ac.uk/textonly/cver/pubs/cverbrf004.pdf
Related links
Stefan Speckesser webpage: http://cver.lse.ac.uk/about/Research_Staff.asp#Speckesser