Futureskills Scotland Expert Briefing: Skills in a Global Economy

Chris Humphries is passionate about skills. For him, investing in people’s skills is central to:

• improving the performance of businesses and, ultimately,the whole economy;
• rising to the opportunities of demographic change,especially an ageing population; and
• tackling inequality and social exclusion and giving people better life chances.

This paper reflects his wealth of experience as an advisor to governments, a leader of business organisations and, now, the Director General of City & Guilds. It presents challenges to people, employers and governments and concludes with a ten-point plan: the priority initiatives that Chris Humphries believes are essential to “ensure a secure future for our people, our businesses and our economy.”

A theme that strongly influences the plan is ‘change’. Chris Humphries highlights the ageing population and shifts in the patterns of industries and jobs as two, related, trends that demand particular attention. When dealing with population ageing he rightly highlights the international dimension of this issue: population ageing is something facing most European nations. He also emphasises the opportunities that ‘positive’ ageing presents: increased life-spans,with more people living healthily for longer mean a possible increase in the supply of labour.

On the changing structure of industries and jobs, Chris Humphries makes two important points. First, the way in which the economy is changing is often misunderstood. While there is ever increasing demand for people with high level skills, there is also a growing need for people to do jobs that typically need lower level skills.  As other commentators have said, the economy is producing more ‘lovely’ jobs as well as more ‘lousy’ ones . We are not on a one-way street to a high-skills knowledge economy.

Secondly, the need to replace people who leave jobs – because they retire, move to another job etc. – creates many more vacancies and training needs than the ‘new’ jobs that arise from growing industries and occupations. The real significance of an ageing workforce is that even in industries that will see job losses – like much of manufacturing – retirements mean that job opportunities will arise for new workers.

This paper sets challenges for us all. It also provokes thoughts and sheds light on a range of issues. It is a welcome contribution to the debate on skills.

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