Today, the average Australian completes a total of 24,000 hours of education and training (including time in school, post secondary and on-the-job learning). This is 300 billion hours across the whole Australian population. Demand for re-skilling, up-skilling and the new skills for new workers will double the education and training required to 600 billion hours by 2040.
This is one of the key findings of the groundbreaking Future Skills Report released by Alphabeta, commissioned by Google, that analyses recent changes in more than 300 jobs, more than 2,000 work tasks and more than 500 skills required to complete these tasks. Advances in technologies and automation sweeping through everything from supermarket checkouts to farming, also means there are changes in the kinds of ongoing education and training that Australians need.
Similarly in Singapore, employees are also encouraged to upskill, as companies look to alleviate industry-wide shortage of skilled manpower. Key partnerships with educational institutions such as polytechnics, universities and private training centres, or government organisations like SkillsFuture Singapore, IMDA, NTUC LearningHub and Community Development Councils are essential as Singapore aims to equip the workforce for the technologically augmented jobs of the future.