e-Skills: The pain in Spain….
Spain’s unemployment hit 20% recently, which is coincidentally the percentage of jobs available in Europe in 5 years time that will not need e-skills (according to IDC). So perhaps Spain is just ahead of schedule? To be fair the roles affected are most likely tourism and construction jobs. Both fuelled by northern Europeans in search of predictable sun.
My guess is that affluent Indian, Chinese and Africans will have little need or desire to get on a plane with a view to playing a week or two’s worth of skin cancer roulette. And given that these are the guys with the money that will be a problem for Spain.
Behind the scenes Spain is preparing for a digital future and intends to be at the forefront of high value innovation in due course. The question is will it and the rest of Europe be quick enough?
Being e-skilled won’t save you. There are two types of e-skills:
- Those that are used to drive innovation and put Europe at the top of the food chain
- Those that are used to provide the commodity services, such as finance, IT and manufacturing that will be consumed by those further up the food chain beyond Europe.
Europe needs to decide what its new role is and then very quickly put the processes in place to accelerate the chosen vision.
