Presenters at the HEART Trust/NTA’s inaugural Labour Market Research Day last week Tuesday were agreed that Jamaica needs to prepare students to meet the demands of an emerging economy, especially in light of the country’s ageing population.

The speakers, drawn from both the public and private sectors, addressed a public forum at Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston under the theme ‘Creating and Maintaining an Efficient Labour Market’. The line-up included the executive director of the HEART Trust/NTA, Dr Wayne Wesley; Senior Specialist at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Dr Hassan Ndahi; CEO of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), Dennis Chung; and head of the Hugh Lawson Shearer Trade Union Education Institute (HLSTUEI), Danny Roberts.

Dr Marshall Hall, chairman of the Labour Market Reform Commission guided the discussion.

Dr Wesley posited that all stakeholders in the education and training sector, particularly those at the tertiary level, need to rethink the current modus operandi of teaching in order to prepare students for emerging economic opportunities. He said that according to labour market intelligence research conducted by the National Training Agency, one area which will see a demand for skilled workers in short order is product development.

“Innovation must be the hallmark of what is coming out of the universities. We need research and innovation that will drive product development and also drive the way companies or the manufacturing sector or enterprises will be going about doing business,” Wesley said.

The HEART Trust head argued that such an approach would yield new employment opportunities, and urged employers and employees to be willing to adapt to a dynamic workforce.

“No longer should the education and the training (sectors) be preparing individuals for jobs in a static environment [for] the jobs available today may not be the same jobs available tomorrow,” he warned.

Dr Wesley’s reference is in line with statistics on the HEART Trust’s Labour Market Information portal which says, for example, that the aviation industry will need to supply approximately one million new commercial airline pilots and maintenance technicians between now and 2032. By contrast, lower-skilled jobs in the accommodation and food service industries are at an 87 per cent risk of replacement by robots.

For his part, Chung emphasised the need for planning.

“We have to use our resources to encourage people to seek careers that are going to be in demand in the future. We must create a labour force that can take advantage of the areas where we can have a comparative advantage,” he said.

In his address, Roberts stated that the categories in which Jamaica was ranked between 104 and 111 out of 148 countries in the 2015/2016 Global Competitive Index, are pay and productivity and the capacity to retain talent in the country. These areas were viewed as impediments in the country’s efforts to achieve labour market efficiency.

“If we can shift the demand from the “top jobs” to the areas that are critical to economic growth and produce the supply of labour that is skilled and highly trained, while providing competitive wages and salaries to retain our talents, then the groundwork for creating and maintaining an efficient labour market would have been laid,” noted Roberts.

Dr Ndahi, meanwhile, called for an integrated labour market information system which would act as the central database of current and future statistics and analytical information.