New Delhi [India], July 18 — The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of more than 555 million workers and 200 million higher education students around the globe, according to the world’s largest online learning platform Coursera.
In India, the unemployment rate reached 27.1 per cent in early May as nearly 122 million Indians lost their jobs between March and April. To revive jobs and economies, institutions must enable widespread access to skills development so that people can swiftly enter and return to the workforce.
This requires understanding the state of job-relevant skills for their respective populations, including for their countries, industries and fields of study, said Coursera in its latest Global Skills Index.
Leaders across private, public, and education sectors can shape reskilling efforts for economic revival as higher skill proficiency is linked to GDP growth, labour force participation.
“Workforce recovery in a post-pandemic world relies on broad base reskilling. Institutions must lead this effort by providing people with equal access to skills needed for the jobs of the future,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera.
The Coursera Global Skills Index 2020 report says countries, both developed and developing, excelling in critical skills see more income equality. Data shows a negative correlation between a country’s average skill proficiency across domains and the share of income held by the top 10 per cent in a country.
Every skill proficiency per cent gained for a country is associated with a 600 dollars increase in GDP per capita. Industries with more highly skilled talent, especially in technology skills, see higher stock returns and less disruption from Covid-19.
Our data reveals the correlation between an industry’s skill proficiency and its one-year US stock return is 43 per cent across all skill domains and 39 per cent with the technology domain.
Of the 200 million higher education students whose studies have been disrupted by Covid-19, 80 per cent are located in countries with emerging or lagging skills.
Nearly 80 per cent of students enrolled in tertiary education are located in countries that have both closed schools due to Covid-19 and are in the bottom half of the world rankings for proficiency in business, technology and data science skills.
Institutions navigating Covid-19 continue to prioritise business, technology and data science skills, said the Coursera Global Skills Index 2020 report.
Looking across the 65 million learners on the platform and drawing on rich performance data of learners in the past 12 months, the report benchmarks skills proficiency for 60 countries, 10 industries, and 11 fields of study in business, technology, and data science.