Communications of the ACM
Digital Skills Shortage Leaves Eu Youth a Step Behind
A woman using a computer in the lounge area of the 27th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, December 2010.
Credit: Reuters
The European Commission (EC) estimates that the information technology (IT) and digital skills shortage could reach 700,000 workers by 2015. New EC research says young people know how to use mobile phones and play video games, but they lack the basic digital skills necessary to secure jobs in a rapidly digitizing economy.
"Young people need to appreciate the professional aspects of the new digital world," says Antonio Tajani, EC's commissioner for industry and entrepreneurship. Tajani has launched a series of events for e-skills week, which the EC hopes will bring greater attention to the issue and lead to ideas that could help solve the problem.
The EC expects jobs for highly qualified people to increase by 16 million by 2020, which gives the European Union only a fixed amount of time to improve IT and digital skills and help young people become productive members of the global workforce. Tajani says the "supply [of skilled workers] has become a bottleneck for growth in the tech sector, creating a leaky pipeline that threatens to hamper European innovation and global competitiveness."
From Reuters
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found