Skills anticipation—The future of work and education

• Skills are key to improving economic performance at individual and macro levels.
• Education and training is the key to improving skills.
• Projections can help ensure education and training delivers the right skills.
• Systematic anticipation of the future can help inform career choices and decisions.
• But education is not just about preparing people for work.

Skills are frequently advocated as a panacea for economic and social ills, and anticipation of changing skill needs is seen as playing a key role in ensuring education and training deliver the right skills. Although mechanistic “manpower planning” of education and training systems from the top down is not a practical possibility in free market economies systematic efforts to peer into the future can help both policy makers and individuals to make better informed choices. There are huge uncertainties, but many trends and patterns are robust. Education is not just about preparing people for work but also about changing the path of economic development. Decisions about education by both policy makers and individuals will influence how the future will unfold.