Yesterday morning, June 26, 2012, McKinsey on Society hosted a live webinar, titled “Jobs for the Young and Restless”, discussing the topic of youth unemployment and global labor markets. The webinar was moderated by Peter Humi, Former Bureau Chief of CNN Paris, and featured a panel composed of: Richard Dobbs, Director of McKinsey Global Institute, Khadiga Fahmy, Program Manager of IFC’s Middle East and North Africa Division, and Henri-Bernard Solignac-Lecomte, Senior Economist for OECD.
Dobbs began the webinar with the statistic that globally, we’re short 90 million workers. Dobbs explained that the skills gap is leading to a more disparate economy as, “the unskilled are growing up poorer and the skilled richer”. Dobbs shared the encouraging statistic that, “1.1 billion jobs created in the last 30 years have taken 600 million people out of poverty”, but later explained that despite the growing workforce, due to a lack of proper degree attainment, McKinsey predicts a shortage of 38-40 million college-educated workers by 2020.
The notion that adults are entering the workforce without the proper skills and qualifications quickly became one of the main themes of the webinar.
According to Khadiga Fahmy, who added insight about education and the workforce in the Arab world, the skills young adults are getting are not relevant to the workforce. Fahmy shared the statistics that, most people starting jobs in Arab countries need on average 12 months of training, a staggering outlier from the 3-month international average. According to Fahmy, 85 million jobs need to be created in Arab countries in order for the employment rate to reach international level of 52%. However, the problem still remains that employers can’t find people qualified to fulfill current job vacancies. This is because it’s the high skilled jobs that need to be filled, but the education system is not producing graduates with the adequate skill set to do those jobs.
One initiative that is working to give young adults the qualifications necessary to complete these high skilled jobs is the “Education for Employment” Foundation. E4E seeks to “create job opportunities for unemployed youth in the Middle East and North Africa by providing world-class professional and technical training that leads directly to career-building jobs”.
Henri-Bernard Solignac-Lecomte added his perspective about education and workforce-readiness on the African continent. Similar to the notions that Dobbs shared, Solignac-Lecomte explained how, “the 60 million jobs that have been created on the African continent doesn’t compare to 100 million people seeking the jobs”. Also, echoing the sentiments shared by Fahmy, Solignac-Lecomte stated that, “Africa-similar to Arab world- sees a mismatch between courses offered and skills needed”.
These international trends are also problems in the States. In a perspective piece, Patty Stonesifer, Chair of the White House Council for Community Solutions, sums up the problem by saying: “Too many American students leave school unprepared for college or work. And it’s not just those who fail to graduate. The disconnect between the classroom and the workplace leaves many high school graduates—and even many college graduates—unprepared to find a career and excel in it.”
From here we must ask ourselves: How do we ensure that young adults are receiving the proper credentials needed to succeed in the workforce? And beyond that: How do we ensure that through pursuit of these degrees, students are obtaining the proper skill sets and knowledge that are applicable in the workforce?
CEOs for Cities is working to explore questions like these with the Talent Dividend and the Skills Dividend, which links the Talent Dividend to workforce development/labor outcomes.