White Paper

Wales is at the centre of a number of significant disruptions likely to bring long-term changes for its people and economy. Some of these are global in nature, such as automation and technological change. Some affect the whole UK – most obviously, the uncertainty around Brexit. Others come from within Wales, such as the rapid increases in its older population, which we will see expand over the coming years. For the people and economy of Wales to be ready for these very 21st century changes, we will need to see a 21st century skills system ready to equip Wales for the future. This report marks the first of two for this project on Wales, and follows our previous reports on the skills systems in Scotland and Northern Ireland. As a whole, the project aims to look at how to build a 21st century skills system in Wales, starting through this first report with a focus on the challenges and opportunities facing the skills system in Wales, before moving on to look at what needs to change and what needs to stay the same to prepare the skills system in Wales for the future.

With large-scale technology disruption, organizations will need to respond in a transformational way. It means rethinking how organizations approach workforce skills and talent management. This report will highlight the future skills your organization will need in 2020 and how you can prepare your workforce for this new decade. In this report, you’ll discover: The latest learning trends & hottest skills based on what 40+ million people are learning on Udemy worldwide The top 10 trending tech skills, soft skills, and business skills in 2020 The top 10 skills trending by role and industry in 2020 5 ways to reinvent learning & development to prepare your workforce for the skills of the future

The fifth annual McGraw Hill Future Workforce Survey, representing over 1,000 college students, looks at their confidence, motivation, influences, and job prospects as they prepare for their future careers. Highlights from this year's survey include: (1) college preparedness: details of which aspects of college life students feel prepared or unprepared for; (2) career preparedness: perceptions of preparedness vary widely across gender and other student groups; (3) workforce skills and resources: largely, students don't feel they've gained critical career skills and are seeking additional help; and (4) jobs and employer perceptions: undergrads are confident about landing a job but a big gap remains between student and employer perception of preparedness.

The United States is experiencing near-historic low unemployment amid an extended period of economic expansion. The skills shortage that Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute have been tracking for the past 17 years continues to swell, threatening to impede the current growth in the US manufacturing industry. This fourth skills gap study explores the depths of today's talent shortage in manufacturing, how jobs are changing due to technology and automation, and what measures manufacturers could take to solve today's shortage while preparing their future workforce for success.

For the first time it is possible to gauge the relative performance of EU Member State skills systems and, in doing so, contribute to the policy discourse on skills, employment, and growth. Countries need to equip their workforce with the appropriate skills for their labour markets; to do so, they need the right policies. The ESI helps understand which policies work, highlighting trends shaping skills systems across the EU. It allows analysis of a skills system in three different areas: skills development, skills activation and skills matching. Skills development assesses the effectiveness of compulsory and post-compulsory education. Skills activation examines the transition from education to work. Skills matching shows to what extent skills are matched with an appropriate job. The report presents findings from the 2018 ESI update and provides in-depth analysis including individual Member State performances.

Tasmania, like many economies, is undergoing a process of economic restructuring tied to what is known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Technological mega-trends – including digital disruption, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, automation and robotics – are transforming the nature of work and careers. These changes are happening at the same time as a range of other economic, demographic and social shifts. A growing concern linked to this revolution is the polarisation of the workforce. There is evidence the workforce is being hollowed out, particularly for young people. A growing proportion of jobs are either high or low skilled, while a declining share require mid-level skills. These mid-level jobs have long been considered "entry-level" positions suitable for school leavers and graduates. Many experts argue the loss of entry-level jobs will reduce opportunities for young people to enter the workforce and limit opportunities for career progression for people in lower-skilled jobs, with long-term consequences. This workforce polarisation, tied to deep structural issues, highlights the need to provide and prioritise continuous skill development and flexible career pathways. Addressing the issue will also help Tasmania capture and maximise opportunities for increased competitiveness and productivity in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Conversely, in the absence of strategic policy intervention, growing polarisation could impede the state’s economic performance and efforts to close the social inequality gap. Workforce polarisation over time has the potential to threaten productivity, social mobility and inclusive growth.

Occupations within the community sector are varied, and organisations in the sector deliver a wide range of human services. The six key areas supported by the CS&D training package are: Community services, Indigenous Environmental Health/Population Health; Volunteering; Youth Services and Child Protection; Youth Justice; and Housing. The sector is divided into: Community services and development; Chaplaincy and pastoral care; and Volunteering., Industry Reference Committees are collectively responsible for overseeing the development and review of training package products, including qualifications, serving the skills needs of almost 50 per cent of the Australian workforce. The skills forecast includes: Sector overview; Sector outlook; Challenges and opportunities; Employment and skills outlook; Key generic skills - ranked in order of importance; Key drivers for change and proposed responses; Proposed schedule of work.

Among the steps to improve a country's competitiveness, several commentators and international institutions include a general emphasis on deregulation and decentralization of industrial relations. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by studying whether and how firm-level unionism and collective agreements affect workplace training, a key ingredient to competitiveness. Theory provides inconclusive predictions on the various channels and processes through which firm-level industrial relations may affect workplace training. Quantitative and qualitative analyses, when used in isolation, have also proved insufficient for an adequate account of the various factors at play. This is where our paper mostly contributes. In the spirit of opening the "black box" of firm-level unionism and collective bargaining, we mix together quantitative and qualitative strategies. Our results suggest that workplace unionism, and especially decentralized collective agreements, favor workplace training in subtler and often more dynamic ways than commonly understood.

Online labour platforms matching labour supply and demand are profoundly modifying the world of work. Businesses use them to outsource tasks to a world-wide pool of workers; while workers can access work opportunities transcending national boundaries. Increasingly, workers are located in developing and transition economies. This paper is based on survey of online workers of Ukraine, which in 2013-2017 occupied the first place in Europe, and the fourth place in the world in terms of the amount of financial flows and the number of tasks executed by workers through online labour platforms. Focusing on working conditions of digital workers, the paper shows that while the majority of these workers are satisfied with their online work, a sizeable proportion faces risk of being in disguised or dependent employment relationship, works informally, and has a poor social protection. The earnings through the platforms are generally comparable to the earnings in the local labour market, but they do undercut payments for equivalent work that could have been performed in other countries. There is an important gender pay gap in online work. The paper also shows how these working conditions are shaped by both local and international business practices of posting tasks on such platforms. Based on these findings, it presents a set of policy reflections, both for Ukraine and for the future global governance in the world of digital work.