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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2009
This chapter concludes the book by providing an overview of a wide variety of training policies. These policies are viewed against the backdrop of the major market failures in skill acquisition, government failures in training policy, and the available evidence on the economic consequences of these failures. The chapter discusses the efficiency and equity implications of alternative policy strategies, identifies the circumstances under which various proposed measures are likely to be effective, and explores the implications for employment, production, and economic growth. Finally, it highlights a limited number of policies that deserve closer attention, and outlines areas for future research that could clarify how the appropriate choices among these policies are to be made.
In many advanced industrial countries there is a growing concern that people are not acquiring sufficient skills. In the comparatively flexible labour markets of the USA and the UK, wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers have grown dramatically over the past decade and a half, suggesting that the rising demand for skilled labour has not been met by an equally rising supply. In the less flexible labour markets of Denmark, France, Spain and other European countries, this widening wage gap is far less pronounced, but everywhere the problem of unemployment is concentrated among the unskilled people, once again indicating that it is the unskilled rather than the skilled jobs that are in short supply.
The fact that the unemployed are predominantly unskilled has made the problem of skill acquisition particularly acute. The high unemployment sustained in Europe since the mid-1970s has been a human tragedy and a colossal waste of resources.
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