Some skills should come before jobs, others develop with the job

To be clear from the onset: I will not oversimplify the unemployment (or inactivity) problem in the Western Balkan countries as solely due to a lack of skills in the population. Low employment rates result from both insufficient creation of jobs by enterprises and too-high a fraction of the workforce that is ill-equipped to take on the jobs that a modern economy creates. Both issues are intertwined. Solutions, therefore, require efforts on several fronts to enable a more vibrant private sector –including improvements in the business environment, enterprise restructuring, integration in global markets and promoting entrepreneurship— as well as to prepare workers for new job opportunities.

As part of these solutions, some skills need to come before jobs. All youth need to acquire a solid foundation of cognitive (e.g., basic literacy and numeracy) and socio-emotional skills (e.g., discipline, persistence, teamwork) before entering the labor market. These foundational skills are best developed from pre-school through high school education. They are a pre-requisite for learning-readiness and trainability of prospective workers since they enable the acquisition of technical and job-specific skills through tertiary schooling, training, and on-the-job experience. The evidence strongly suggests that these skills are essential for the inevitable job transitions of a fast-changing labor market, constantly disrupted by technology and international competition.  If youth fail to acquire these skills, they will face an entire work life with serious deficits that are hard to remedy.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at How to Break the Curse of Unemployment: Jobs First or Skills First? | Future Development.