For all the advances in hiring technologies and data analytics, finding the right person for the job isn’t getting any easier. HR leaders up and down the country are grappling with record numbers of vacancies and a shortage of workers to fill them. And with geopolitical uncertainty, demographic change, technology and environmental sustainability transforming the world of work as much as the world at large, there are long-term challenges to confront when it comes to the jobs and skills.
Our economy is plagued by skills gaps, with real consequences for businesses on the ground. The Department for Education’s latest Employer Skills Survey finds that 36% of all vacancies were skills shortage vacancies in 2022. Yet employer investment in training has fallen in recent years, with the UK’s training spend per employee diminishing to 26% less in real terms than recorded in 2005. The EU average investment in training per employee is double that of the UK, meaning it would take an extra £6.5 billion each year to catch up with our European neighbours.
Headline measures conceal troubling inequalities of opportunity. Graduates are four times more likely to get training at work than people with no qualifications. Over the last decade, low-wage sectors such as retail and hospitality, which employ a higher proportion of younger workers and which were already investing the least, tended to cut the most.
Young people have seen the sharpest declines in participation in job-related training and the fall in apprenticeship starts has disproportionately impacted young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Overlooking these young people risks severe problems for the hiring managers of the future: 1.4 million more people are projected to retire over the next 17 years than young people will enter the workforce.
