Abstract

TVET and tertiary education systems are known to be under pressure to deliver graduates meeting the labour market demand. The performance of these systems is commonly judged by the: a) scale of shortages of skilled labour reported by employers, and b) surpluses of graduates, some of whom may be unemployed or employed in low-skilled or different occupations leading to occupational and qualification mismatches.
Imbalances between the supply and demand for skilled labour may arise due to various reasons. For example, because increasing education level of the population is outperforming the growth of skilled jobs in the economy, or the TVET graduates are not absorbed by industries, etc.
Likewise, imbalance in occupational structure of the labour market could arise because TVET and the tertiary systems may continue producing graduates in occupations which give them little or no chance finding a job as the local labour market may already be saturated with persons having similar occupational profiles.
Due to the lack of relevant labour market information (LMI) on shortages and surpluses of skilled labour or lack of expertise in how to use it, TVET systems commonly operate as (i) those “student demand driven” or (ii) whose training programs’ delivery is determined by the availability of resources, instructors, and equipment.
In particular, the availability of LMI and its use in programming of professional education help reducing risks of shortages and surpluses of skilled labour in the regional markets.
It should however be noted that, generally, the national labour market oriented statistical surveys (LFS, labour turnover survey, etc.) do not aim to advise TVET and tertiary education systems directly. Therefore, the professional education systems must identify, interpret and use additional LMI containing estimates of anticipated annual demand for skilled labour and detailed occupational structure of the labour force.
Because of the above, while countries have such powerful statistical tools as LFS, the National Statistical Organisations (NSOs) do not usually provide the Ministries of Education and Ministries of Labour with data on persons employed by industry and occupation at ISCO-08 levels 3 and 4 (minor and unit groups) and do not produce estimates of replacement demand. This leads to the situation when national TVET and Higher Education authorities lack a comprehensive LMI containing data on shortages and surpluses of skilled labour, which hampers making operational evidence-based decisions about training programmes, balancing delivery of TVET graduates and planning optimal skilled labour replacement.
This ISP Session will present a revolutionary methodology developed by the team of international experts working on the ILO and UNDP projects in Armenia and the Philippines, which has made it possible to modify and enhance the LFS tools of these two countries to produce (i) labour market information needed for TVET delivery planning; (ii) employment occupational structure at ISCO-08 levels 3 and 4 to enable anticipating skills demand by occupation; (iii) measuring the additional demand for skilled labour; and (iv) extend the use of occupations of unemployed persons with previous employment experience to estimate skilled labour supply along with data on TVET graduates.