On June 21, 2012, Michael Kelley writes on the Business Insider that strains in the global labor market could lead to a surplus of up to 95 million low-skilled workers and a shortage of up to 95 million high- and medium-skilled workers by 2020.
According to a recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) the conclusion was that unless there is a immediate and massive global effort to improve worker skills, there will be “far too few workers with the advanced skills needed to drive a high-productivity economy and far too few job opportunities for low-skill workers.”
One paragraph is particularly foreboding:
“For advanced economies, such imbalances would likely lead to more long- term and permanent joblessness. More young people without post-secondary training would fail to get a start in the job market and older workers would drop out because they don’t qualify for jobs that are being created. The polarization of incomes between high- and low-skill workers could become even more pronounced, slowing the advance in national living standards, and increasing public-sector burdens and social tensions. In some advanced economies, less-skilled workers could very well grow up poorer than their parents, in real terms.”
