Future-ready workforce holds key to success for GCC region

Times News Service

MUSCAT: Young jobseekers and employed professionals in Oman and the other GCC nations must urgently develop the skills required to succeed in the workplace over the long term, a new report has said.

Titled ‘The Lost Workforce: Upskilling for the Future’, the report in published by financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and was released in collaboration with Dubai’s World Government Summit. It looks into strategies, actions and policies for resolving upskilling issues, calling for governments, businesses and society to work together, to engender sustainable growth, employability and inclusion.

With more than 108 million people in the Middle East being between the ages of 15 and 29 years old, this marks the highest number of young people transitioning into adulthood in the region’s history. The GCC, specifically, is facing a daunting shift in demographics, known as the ‘youth bulge’. Around 60 percent of its citizens are under the age of 30. It is predicted that the GCC’s youth population will balloon to 65 million by 2030.

Against this backdrop, youth unemployment is already more than twice as high as overall unemployment rates. According the World Economic Forum, youth joblessness stands at 11 per cent in the UAE, 20 per cent in Oman and is highest in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia at 27 per cent. That rate is even higher for women.

On the region’s drive toward transformation, Laurent Probst, Partner at PwC Luxembourg, Government Digital Transformation & Innovation Leader and the report’s author said: “Countries with visionary leaders that support enabling conditions for the adoption of the digital economy, will encourage the design of new, innovative solutions for their educational and vocational training systems.”

He added, “To paint the picture within a Middle Eastern context, this region has a very young, vibrant and digitally-savvy population, coupled with very forward thinking leadership. You need to only to consider such modern roles as the recently created Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, or a Ministry for Happiness and Tolerance, or the recently announced Centre of Excellence for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) to see that what makes this region is a place where innovation and digital initiatives are at the forefront, making it an ideal place for transforming, training and upskilling the workforce of the future.”

However, The world over, there is a growing mismatch between employer vacancies and candidate skills. From Rio to Rome, from San Diego to Saudi Arabia, hundreds of millions of unemployed, overqualified or under-skilled workers do not have, or no longer have, the relevant skillsets to fulfil specific roles. This ‘lost workforce’ represents a major loss in productivity and could set the stage for growing global malcontent, particularly among youth.

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