Letter: Employers are also to blame for the skills gap

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Lord Layard makes great points on the Skills Bill (“A real ‘skills revolution’ needs Conservative MPs to stop talking and acting”, Opinion, 4 December). I hope members and peers are listening to it, but I am not counting on it. However, I question the claim that “according to many economists this lack of professional skills is the greatest source of wage inequality in our country – and of our low national productivity”.

It’s not that it’s wrong. It’s just that it seems to have become an unchallenged assumption.

Two points must be taken off. First, the past experience of changing the labor market by changing the education and skills system is not encouraging. You can improve people’s skills without necessarily transforming the nature of work, leading to overqualification and underemployment. There is no iron law that the expansion of supply transforms the demand for human capital.

Second, in some ways we have already experienced a skills revolution. About half of young people attend university, up from around a quarter in 2000. Meanwhile, the broader skill levels of the UK population are much higher than they were 20 years ago. But the UK still struggles with low productivity.

It is possible that the new skills created are the “wrong skills”. However, it seems just as plausible that the problem concerns both employers and certain skills gaps in the population. Changing the way work is organized, the people treated in the workplace and the skills used is a part of the economic performance puzzle that is eternally ignored.

Stephen OverellManchester, United Kingdom

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