EUIndia Seminar on "Skills Development, Training and Employment"

1
EU-India Seminar on"Skills Development, Training
and Employment"

• Occupations
• and skills forecast
• An original way of addressing
• labour market issues in France
• Yves Chassard

2
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• A macro-econometric model based on a
  trend-setting scenario trends in labour force,
  productivity in various industries, structural
  unemployment rate
• A set of industry employment and output
  projections and a detailed sectoral breakdown of
  net employment creation
• Occupational statistics and employment
  projections changes in the structure of
  employment at occupational group level
• The detailed occupations with the fastest
  projected growth, as well as those with the
  largest numerical increases and decreases
• The total job openings projected to occur due to
  growth in the economy and the net replacement
  needs resulting from workers who leave the labour
  force definitively.

3
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• Every five years we build a projection of jobs
  for the next ten years using a 80 items
  occupational classification.
• Quite different from employment projections by
  the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (750 detailed
  occupations)
• The output is used to feed the social dialogue
  between both sides of industry, at the industry
  and local levels.

4
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• Two major background elements
• 1. A continuous shift towards a service economy
  ongoing decline of employment in agriculture and
  industry.
• 2. A lot of workers will leave the labour market,
  due to the ageing of the baby-boom cohort (those
  who were born between 1946 and 1963).

5
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• The ten occupations where the number of job
  openings will be the greatest 1) personal and
  home care aides, 2) office and plant cleaning and
  maintenance occupations, 3) primary and secondary
  school teachers, 4) chief executives and support
  services managers, 5) medical assistants, 6)
  motor vehicle operators, 7) skilled blue collars
  in process industries, 8) computer software
  engineers, 9) nurses, 10) sales representatives.
• The structure of job openings will have the shape
  of an hourglass it will be wider at both the
  top and the bottom of the scale of skills.

6
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• Skill shortages are expected to grow, fuelled in
  part by the demographic changes creating a
  smaller active population the need for more
  mobile workers is likely to increase.
• The worst scenario to experience both high
  unemployment rate and skill shortages in a number
  of occupations.

7
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• A growing competition between firms to attract
  the highly skilled and well experienced labour
  force (management, business and financial
  occupations, computer specialists, sales and
  related occupations, engineers ...) These high
  skilled jobs are now mainly occupied by men.
• But there will be a lot of job openings in jobs
  which are now held by low skilled women Nursing
  and home health aides, security services
  occupations, retail sales workers (esp.
  cashiers), maids and housekeeping cleaners,
  office and plant cleaning workers, personal care
  and service occupations.

8
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• There might be some shortages even for some low
  skilled jobs how to take up that challenge ?
• Call on non-national workers and increase
  immigration flows ?
• Increase the quality of these jobs to what
  extent can we offer better career prospects to
  personal care and service workers ?
• The gender issue how to foster diversity, i.e.
  more women in high skilled jobs and more men in
  personal care and service occupations ?

9
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• Job descriptions are determined by the
  organisation of economic activity within firms
  the shift towards a service economy and the ICT
  do not lead to just one type of organisation and
  management of the labour force
• Some firms are inclined to streamline work
  organisation and production process through
  partitioning conception and design activities and
  implementation activities (large firms)
• But others are organised in such a way that they
  are able to react to the market more rapidly
  their employees are more versatile and adaptable,
  autonomous job descriptions are less clear-cut
  (SMEs, especially when they belong to a network).

10
Forecasting occupations and skills

• Occupations in 2015
• Robert Reich The Work of Nations, 1991
• Symbolic analysts or mind workers vs routine
  production workers
• - Providing opportunities for all to become
  symbolic analysts by investing in education at
  all levels
• - Increasing the numbers of those who could apply
   symbolic analysis  to production and in-person
  services