Global Skill Shortages

As the world entered the 21st century, global skill shortages in many occupations were evident throughout the world. While these were mitigated by a global recession, there is no generally agreed upon method for measuring these shortages. This text discusses various theories of measurement. Using data from 19 developed countries in North America, Europe and the Pacific region, the authors explore the various aspects of skilled labour shortages, develop a methodology of measuring shortages by occupation and provide estimates of the likelihood of the occurrence of such shortages. They develop labour market indicators which measure the degree or shortage or surplus in different occupations. The study covers as many as 49 occupational groups, although the number varies by country. The indicators are compared to anecdotal reports about shortages in the countries studied as well as correlated with various economic, political and institutional indicators. Some occupations such as computer scientists were common across countries and part of a global shortage.

Table of Contents:
Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Theoretical Aspects of Skill Shortages 3. Globalization and Skill Shortages 4. Skill Shortage Studies in Selected Countries 5. Shortage Indicators by Occupation and Country 6. Factors Correlated with Shortages 7. Coping with Skill Shortages 8. Concluding Remarks Appendix Index

About the Author :
Malcolm S. Cohen, President, Employment Research Corporation, Ann Arbor, Michigan and a former Director, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Michigan, US and Mahmood A. Zaidi, Professor of Human Resources and Industrial Relations, and Director, International Program Development, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, US

Review :
'Just before sitting down to write these few words, I happened upon this lead-in to a USA Today article (May 14, 2002), 'Nurse anaesthetists in short supply - Hospitals crank up salaries to attract pivotal employees.' And, as many are aware, this particular shortage has been the case for a period of time measured in decades. Why is it that, for some job classes, supply persists in falling short of demand at the going wage for long periods of time, whether or not the aggregate labor market is tight or slack? What characteristics of labor markets explain this phenomenon? What are the observable indicators that identify a particular job class as being seriously in shortage or as heading into such a condition? Do the same indicators manage to identify most shortage categories? Is the shortage phenomenon local, national, or global? How do economic agents, both on the supply and the demand side, cope with such shortages? These are some of the major issues dealt with by Cohen and Zaidi in their concise and highly readable Global Skill Shortages. Economists, business managers, HR professionals, career counsellors, and educators will all enjoy and get the message in this well-written book. Economists in particular, however, will appreciate the way the authors push the analytics of the problem into suggesting the route to empirical indicators.' 'Skill shortages can be a major bottleneck for economic activity and growth. Constructing accurate measures of skill shortages that could be used by policymakers to target programs to reduce these bottlenecks has proven to be challenging. But in this new volume, Malcolm Cohen and Mahmood Zaidi take on this challenge and present a new indicator of skill shortages by detailed occupations across 19 countries. Their global perspective makes this an especially interesting and useful work for economists and policymakers interested in assessing the global capacity to meet occupational shortages across countries.' 'As a legacy of the Great Depression, measurement of unemployment - labor surplus - advanced throughout the developed world. Macroeconomists focused on driving down unemployment. The reverse condition, labor shortage, was generally neglected and often unmeasured. In this volume, Cohen and Zaidi ably redress the balance, focusing on the labor shortage phenomenon and its statistical appraisal. Their work will surely stimulate further research into labor shortages, the response of employers and workers to them, and critical issues of labor shortage measurement.'