The Digital Skills Gap – IT can only improve performance with the right training

You’d think that with the advance of emerging computer, nano, mobile — and now yes, even wearable — technologies, individual productivity would be soaring. Instead, of the more than 200 million adults in the US digital workforce, only one in ten consider themselves ‘very proficient’ with the digital tools they use every day. And research conducted by Adobe shows the flipside of that equation: 58 per cent of employees – despite using a set of productivity tools at work – report they’re ‘not productive’.  Perhaps this is why labor productivity growth in the US business sector has slowed to a level not seen since the 1950s—just one per cent for Q1 2014.

The problem lies in the fact that despite digital products rapidly proliferating and evolving, they can only improve performance with the right training. And it appears workers, businesses and the entire economy are paying the price, a nearly $1.3 trillion bill for the US economy alone.  For a firm with 1,000 employees, this translates to a $10 million loss each year based on compensation.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  The Economic Implications of the Digital Skills Gap.