Jobs versus Skills: A mix bag of issues!!

Clive Mutame Siachiyako

The job market is chaotic. Lucky ones get something for a living right away, while to others it's another story...the market is not creating viable space for them apply themselves and earn a living. The situation is depressing. Governments are pressured. Graduates are frustrated. Thus, screaming at government over jobs is a common ‘vibe’ among graduates.  

What should be done? Skills appraisal could help. Appraising the viability of skills development systems is a powerful tool is keeping in check with economic development goals. Not knowing the type of skills you would need 5-10 years is disastrous. It creates a risk to import skills or skills mismatch. Britain is facing it today. The price tag for bricklayers is at a ‘chilling’ £1000 per week due to skills shortages of bricklayers. Worse, most of these bricklayers are imported from other countries. 

The UK Daily Mail indicates that builders are hiring Portuguese bricklayers on £1,000 a week because not enough Britons can do the job. “Skilled workers are in such short supply they can demand double the normal day rate of £100,” the paper hinted. A similar labour shortage had forced the UK’s biggest sandwich manufacturer to recruit in Hungary because it could not fill its production line with local workers. 

Picture courtesy: businessnews.com

This is not unique to UK alone. Many countries are faced with different skills gaps or mismatches due to poor skills development foresight. Tertiary education is considered as business as usual. Offering programmes that are of less importance or worse still using out-dated syllabus. 

Where are the planners when all this is happening? When the Central Statistical Office is undertaking economic census, does it factor skills audits as well? Where are the other ministries? Do countries know where they want to go and how to get there? Does it mean foresight is proving to be a very costly commodity?

On the other side, where are the learners? Don’t they see the opportunities? What careers do they ‘value?’ Parents and high schools, what career guidance do they provide to pupils? Do they have correct information of the changing economic directions? When ICTs reigns in the economy, how do economies position themselves to tap from its new opportunities? Do parents look at how many jobs ICTs will take away and create new ones? Do they tell their children deciding on careers the realities of modern labour market? 

Some of the answers to the above questions lay in the learners’ love of white collar jobs. As a result, focus is in wrong places. Similarly, training institutions focus on where learners’ interest is instead of helping revolve mindsets on career selection based on labour market requirements on the ground. 

Training institutions are thus churning out graduates whose skills are in saturation. Coupled with lack of enterprising history, mindsets and lack of risk-taking spirit; figures of the unemployed has soared to higher heights every year. Yet numbers of graduates are increasing. Learners are looking up to governments to create employment. Government is calling on private sector to bail them out and partner in job creation.

Gone are days to look up to government to create substantial jobs to absorb ever increasing numbers of graduates. A new era of new mindsets has come. There is need for graduates prepared to create. They can create their own jobs or add value to natural resources around them. Other support systems are needed to complete this equation of creating personal employment. But the ability to create that employment beats them all. 

The ability to do something is premium to success in life. Money can finish even if it is given to you. The market can misfire and blow aware your investment. But with the right skills and mindset that gives you the resilience to rise again after a temporal defeat, you will beat all odds. Never underrate an appropriate skill. It is the best weapon to conquer life blizzards. 

What is an appropriate skill? It is one which combines your intellectual and psycho-motor abilities to do something. It enables you to use your brains and your hands/legs. You can learn how to speak a language and combine it with your ability to play a sport and fly above all hiccups of life to make it in life. 

But in a case, where training institutions are churning out graduates for jobs that do not exist, eyes will be red and tempers will rise during the job search mission. Yet some sections of the market are yawning for skills. They have received little attention. Learners shun them and training providers abandoning them. 

Reading the UK Daily Mail gets interesting over this issue. The paper adds that “there is a severe shortage of skilled trades-people in Britain – bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, mechanical engineers, HGV drivers. It is just the younger generation; they have grown up with computers. The skills have died off probably because the money was not very good either. The first thing that goes is training.”

Picture courtesy: learningsolutionsmag.com

Doesn't this sound like the case in Zambia where bricklayers and plumbers are mocked? Where most of the young people want to be accountants and lawyers? I wonder whose money they will be accounting when there’s no production. Blue collar skills are shunned. Which child wants to be a plumber? I haven’t heard any from those I have asked ‘what they want to be when they grow up.’

Parents have added to this confusion. They want their children to go into programmes they studies in the 70s. ‘I want you to be a medical doctor.’ Huh really? Did you impart in that child the abilities to be one? Where you there when God was allocating abilities to your children? Do you know your children’s abilities? Let parents leave their children go into areas where they strength lays. 

For those who believe in the bible, Matthew 25: 14 and 15 says “For the kingdom of heaven will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ABILITY.” My interest is on the word ability. The word means different things to different people. 

In simple words, ability means a talent, skill, or proficiency in something. In human resource terms it is ability is an acquired or natural capacity or talent that enables an individual to perform a particular job or task successfully. In legal terms it is the power to carry out a legal act or satisfy a legal obligation. Whatever the case, it has certain common elements despite the definition –the element of doing something.

What happens when a parent forces their child into a career they have no ability into? Can a child who has little ability in abstract things excel compared to others? Can someone gifted with sporting abilities do well being a nurse? Won’t they be hitting patients? Can a child with mathematical abilities articulate legal ramifications well?

What then should be done? Parents help your child identify their abilities and help them nature and use them to earn a living. If you are an engineer and your child have abilities to make people laugh as comedian help them do it and do it well that once they open their mouth everybody rain rivers of laugher tears. Homes are havens of career development and destruction. The words you use on children build their confidence levels to nurture their abilities or destroy them.

Teachers have a huge role to shape children’s destinies. Career masters are very relevant in each school. Careers are not developed without certain guidance. Don’t leave children to be like lost chicks wondering who to be when they grow up. You teach them, you know their weaknesses and strengths.

Ministries of education, labour, and youth and sports should have accurate data on skills shortages for informed skills training direction. Such data signals economic trends to help training providers focus on skills that matter. Leaving things to chance is dangerous to the economy. Rebranding some programmes, modernizing the syllabus and training facilities are crucial steps to take.