Rosen, Α. (2014) “Closing the soft skills gap: Never too early to teach entrepreneurship“, Europe’s World Journal, 22 December.
Here’s a wake-up call: Entrepreneurship is actually falling in the U.S. Shocked? Entrepreneurship and innovation, however, aren’t the same thing – it’s very possible to have innovation without starting your own venture. And the converse is also true; someone can start a new enterprise without a single innovation. But why does it matter which countries are more innovative and entrepreneurial? Economically speaking, over the next 25 years, it may be all that matters and the world should take note. Globally, there is a tsunami of young people entering the labour force but there just aren’t going to be enough jobs if current trends hold true. Half of India’s 1.25 billion residents are under 25 years old. Estimates show that by 2050 there will be more than half a billion young people in Africa.
In the next twenty years, the world will need about 600m more jobs than we are currently projected to have. The looming crisis is so bad that the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked “persistent structural unemployment” as the number-three trend of 2014 – ahead of cyber security and climate change. Clearly, the problem is global. This year, an estimated 56% of those younger than 26 years old in Spain were without jobs. In Greece, that number was more than 62%. Nearly a year ago, I quoted Bernadette Segol, the chief of the European Trade Union Confederation, who said: “27m [young] unemployed in Europe see no light at the end of the tunnel, only the light of a high speed train ready to run them over”.
With such a large train on the tracks, to borrow Segol’s metaphor, the country which best prepares its young people to innovate – making their markets more efficient and creating their own jobs through entrepreneurship – will be best positioned to avoid being run over. That’s because the jobs of tomorrow will come from the companies and innovators of tomorrow. According to research in Japan, companies created after 1996 contributed a net 1.2m new jobs. But conversely, older companies have shed 3.1m jobs in that time. This means that a 10 year old in Japan will likely be working for a company that has not yet been founded. And the same is true in the U.S. and in Europe.
Relevant posts:
- Cingano, F. (2014) “Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth“, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No.163, OECD Publishing, 09 December.
- Beblavý, M. & Veselkova, Μ. (2014) “Future of Skills in Europe: Convergence or Polarisation?“, Social Welfare Policies, CEPS Working Documents, 27 February.
- OECD (2013) OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First results from the survey of adult skills, Paris: OECD.