Almost 34 million working Russians are too highly qualified for their position, or vice versa - insufficient. This is stated in the report prepared by the international consulting company BCG, the non-profit organization World Skills and the state corporation Rosatom. Its results are published by RIA Novosti.
The authors of the document refer to the data of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to which around the world 1.3 billion workers or 23% of their total number are in a similar situation. For this phenomenon, there is also a term - “qualification pit”. According to the forecast, over the next 10 years, the number of people in this situation will increase by another 100 million.
The authors are convinced that this is one of the main problems in the labor market. Global GDP in 2017 lost about $ 5 trillion, the report says.
The current situation is aggravated by the fact that modern technology, artificial intelligence, robots and the Internet are depriving many people of their work, said Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev.
Also on Tuesday, August 27, the results of a survey conducted by the job search service and employees of “Job.ru” were published. According to the study, half of employers are not ready to raise salaries for highly qualified employees.
“Half of the surveyed employers hire specialists with higher qualifications, but do not offer them a salary or a position higher than what was originally assumed in the vacancy. 30% of employers are ready to offer such jobseekers a higher salary and position or to create new jobs for them, ”the study says.
Excessive competence in Russia is determined by the characteristics of education, which provides broad-based knowledge, says Valery Ryazansky, chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy.
“As for the redundancy of competence, it is generally a well-developed system of labor relations and education. Our education has always been aimed at giving a broad-based education. Nothing wrong with that. We have always been famous for what is called an engineering type of education, ”he told RT.
- RIA News
- © Evgeny Epanchintsev
“Individual Support Program”
The report also proposed a mechanism to reduce the number of people in the “qualification pit” - a qualitative transition to a new type of social contract. Note that in some Russian regions this technique is already being applied.
It is assumed that the state helps a person who is below the poverty line to either improve their skills or undergo retraining. Private financing is also provided. In particular, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the wider application of this practice in the course of the message to the Federal Assembly.
“I emphasize: an individual support program is proposed for each, based on the specific situation. At the same time, the person who takes these resources simultaneously incurs certain obligations: to undergo retraining, find work in accordance with this, provide his family, children with a steady income, ”the head of state said on February 20.
He noted several regions where social contracts are successfully applied - these are Kaluga, Ulyanovsk, Tomsk, Vologda and Nizhny Novgorod regions. According to Putin, over 5 years such support "will be able to take advantage of more than 9 million people."
After a person is provided with a social contract, it is necessary to continue monitoring him and his family so that labor incomes become stable, Valery Ryazansky emphasized.
“The experience of the regions, of course, needs to be promoted, it is very important. And questions of the social contract, this is not only an exit on a trajectory of own business. Not everyone can enter the business. There must be other forms of organizing economic life. It can also be the development of a new profession, necessary in a particular locality. When a family enters the path of self-support, it still needs an escort mode, ”the senator added.
- RIA News
- © Vitaliy Timkiv
Market requirements
Another mechanism for overcoming this situation may be reforming the education system to meet changing labor market requirements, experts say. According to MGIMO senior lecturer, political scientist Alexei Zudin, Russia is moving in this direction.
“There is a gap between education and labor market requirements. This gap needs to be narrowed. It is clear that this is worth doing wisely. Because higher education provides, in addition to applied knowledge, primarily fundamental knowledge. A big plus of fundamental knowledge is that they allow retraining to take place. Because when acquiring new, more applied skills, a certain base of knowledge and skills is needed, ”he told RT.
At the moment, there are strong differences between the best training experience and how the system as a whole works, says Dmitry Peskov, special envoy of the Russian president for digital and technological development.
“An analysis of more than a hundred projects that were presented today as part of the national track shows that the gap between best practices and the general training system has only widened at the moment,” he said at the end of the WorldSkills World Championship in Professional Skills and Standards. “As a country, we need to take very serious measures to change public policy following the WorldSkills championship so that we move from individual championship practices to systemic transformations.”
The Minister of Labor and Social Protection Maxim Topilin also said that the conditions have changed.
“However, a lot has changed in Russia over the past two decades. It is not only about ordinary living conditions, but also about working conditions. Almost any of us, recalling the conditions under which and with what equipment he worked in 2000, can appreciate the gigantic changes that have occurred over this relatively short time, ”the minister wrote in his column for RIA Novosti.
In particular, Topilin noted the disappearance of several specialties, the change in existing and the emergence of new professions. He spoke about this in the context of revising the list of professions that women cannot occupy - from January 1, the number of such posts will be reduced by more than four times.
“It remains to add to the above that the very speed with which, by historical standards, the number of works restricting the work of women has decreased several times, speaks of the increasing speed of modernization of our lives,” he emphasized.