Skills And Employability Go Hand In Hand In Today’s Competitive Market

One must also note the connotations of the skill-gap. Gap always has a reference-point. Skill-gap reference-point is the expectations of stakeholders (industry, parents, community) and/or expected outcomes (learning systems)

It is pertinent for labour economics to know what drives the success of individuals in the labour market. Success implies labour market entry, better employment, and better income opportunities.

‘Skill’ is the buzzword in contemporary global discourse in policymaking and research concerned with educational and labour market outcomes.

In the human capital framework, individuals’ success in the labour market is considered to correspond with the skills they possess. Concerns regarding the ‘skill’ and relevance to the discourse are the challenges of skill-shortage, skills-deficit or skill-gap, employability and unemployment.

Accordingly, global and national level skill policies and skill ecosystems parallel to the education system have evolved across countries. Further, multitudes of skill frameworks globally have emerged to understand and address the concerns regarding skills.

Skill is an overarching term that constitutes knowledge, skills, and competencies embodied in human beings and resonates with individuals’ capabilities/capacities.

In the labour market context, it is to designate the ability to successfully complete the tasks and responsibilities of a job-role in an occupation. The vector of skills or skill-set is classified broadly into cognitive and non-cognitive domains; the latter consists of a large variety of skill-set corresponding with attitudes and, personality and behavioural traits. In skill parlance, hard (or core) and soft skills correspond to cognitive and non-cognitive domains. Again, skills that contribute to producing goods and services are called 'productive skills' that overlap with the above domains, and the opposite persists.

Though most cognitive skills are productive, all the non-cognitive are not so; for instance, ‘docility’ is an attribute/characteristic representing personality/behavioural traits and also ‘conscientiousness’ or any one among the big-five personality traits. However, as employers value such traits they influence the labour-market success. Moreover, 'generic' (transferable) skills are applicable or valued across fields, occupations or job-roles. The domain-specific’ (non-transferable) skills are technical and non-technical skills or occupational skills specific to the field, job-role or occupation. Generic and domain-specific skills overlap with the cognitive and non-cognitive domains.

Skills embodied in individuals or their possessions are innate (genetic or natural) and acquired (in schools/colleges or otherwise). They correspond with the long-standing debate on genetics vs. nature vs. nurture. Individuals’ current level of cognitive ability is determined by their innate ability (base) and their cognitive achievement (acquired) through learning; the innate ability partly influences the latter. Again, cognitive achievement constitutes learning in schools (academic achievement) and other spaces. Knowledge-system and human capital discourse once acclaimed the primacy of general intelligence (the ‘g’ factor) determining success in school and labour-market has subsequently accommodated the evidence-based significance of other factors.

Research in neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences (particularly in sociology and economics) has acknowledged the significance of cognitive abilities nurtured, reducing the initial disadvantages and the non-cognitive skills.

However, though educational institutions (schools/colleges) are centres of formal and structured learning and acquiring such skills, there are other learning spaces, such as family, friends, neighbours, community, peer-groups and social learning. Sociologists posited that schools are a type of social system of learning. Besides the skill, another buzzword we often refer to is ‘employability’, which is connected to the ‘skill-gap’ in the educated labour force and, thereby, their unemployment.

However, there is no pattern regarding the education level and unemployment relationship (positive, negative and U-shaped); it depends on the context. The educated unemployment, especially the graduates, is composed of ‘voluntary’ owing to searching and waiting time for a suitable job, and/or ‘involuntary’ due to the skill-gap and/or lack of suitable jobs for the suitably skilled (without any skill-gap).

The latter is due to stagnation or slow growth of employment generation. The simultaneity of industry demand for skilled labour and unemployed graduates reflects nothing but their employability skill-gap. It could be due to the gap(s) in cognitive abilities, cognitive achievement, academic/learning achievement and/or those in the non-cognitive domain.

With rapid advances in knowledge systems and technological change, some occupations and skill-sets become obsolete, the skill composition of certain occupations/job-roles change, and new occupations and skill-sets are the need of the hour.

It aggravates the skill challenge if education systems and skill ecosystems do not address the need. The skill discourse concerned with the connection between the education system and the labour-market points out the inadequacy of vocational education and training (VET) and quality education.

While inadequate VET results in a skill shortage, gap or both, quality deterioration causes the skill gap. Different countries have different degrees of arrangements for VET.

One must also note the connotations of the skill-gap. Gap always has a reference-point. Skill-gap reference-point is the expectations of stakeholders (industry, parents, community) and/or expected outcomes (learning systems). The graduates’ employability skill-gap generally refers to skills acquired in learning systems (education institutions or otherwise) that are short of the industry expected. A tailor-made education system supplying skilled-manpower matching the industry demand and aligned with rapid technological advancements, although debated, has not yet attained any academic, political and policy consensus. A change is pertinent.

The industry's role in addressing the employability challenge is also pertinent. While the shelf life of technology is fast decreasing, the industry is also indulging in cost-cutting measures, especially labour costs. Further, free-riding involved with poaching and job-hopping of trained, experienced and proven employees is increasing with eroding organisational loyalties while emerging start-up culture is aggravating it.

Part of the industry is gradually abstaining from its past practices of imparting organization-level probation or induction training. Industry is disoriented about its investment in training. Rather, industry is looking for job-ready, without investing in preparing them for the job.

On the whole, understanding the employability skill-gap, especially the graduates and their unemployment, requires examining and analysing the deep intricacies of skills, a system of learning, including education institutions, the changing role of industry and changing skill demand with rapid technological advancements.

In the era of AI and ML, these intricacies and their consequences aggravate.

(Venkatanarayana Motkuri is an Associate Professor at Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Hyderabad; R Shital is Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Management and Commerce, Hyderabad)