Five year study examines future employment skill gaps

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) is leading a new five-year research programme projecting the demand and supply of essential employment skills up until the year 2035.

The study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, will see NFER work with employers, policy makers, and education leaders to provide practical insights and evidence to inform long-term planning for how future demands for essential employment skills can be met.

New technologies, coupled with major demographic and environmental change, are predicted to transform employment over the coming decades. Skills such as critical thinking, team work, problem solving and resilience are likely to become increasingly important for jobs across the economy.

Without action to help young people and workers develop the right skills that will be needed in future, there may be widespread under-employment and enduring social and economic problems. This may be one of the great strategic challenges facing our country in the next 10 to 15 years.

The nature of this challenge is not yet well-understood. However, this new study aims to identify the essential employment skills that people will need for work in the future; and project the demand and supply of essential employment skills for 2035, drawing on findings from a new survey of essential employment skills amongst young people and adults aged 16-65 in England.

It aims to establish who is most at risk of not acquiring the necessary skills and being excluded from the labour market; and examine the potential welfare implications; as well as investigate how these skills can be developed through the education system and other mechanisms.

Findings will be published as they emerge in a series of reports from January 2022. They will be accompanied by events to launch and discuss recommendations, focusing on practical insights and evidence that will inform planning for how to meet the future demand for essential employment skills.