Britain’s biggest skills problem is that many firms don’t value them
Productive work and non-productive work largely pay the same. Almost all middle-earning but high-productivity jobs will have a legion of support staff earning almost exactly the same wage but doing nothing that is productive in itself.<p>The only place I have found this not to be true is in finance, where there is a clear incentive to reduce operational costs in order to increase the bonus pool. In engineering, tech, healthcare (almost everywhere in local govt), actually acquiring skills is pointless (if you are able to nepo your way into a management role).<p>That is how you end up with large numbers of over-qualified people simultaneous with low productivity. All the subsidies and incentives for firms to train staff make no difference, we have all the skills we need but the price of those skills is very low.<p>The problem is management competence. Most managers are also unskilled, even managers with technical skill usually come into management after graduating not after working at a lower level.<p>This kind of mismanagement happens everywhere but is the rule in the UK. The US is quite far from perfect, but the UK is not even close to this level yet. We are still at the level where the system is not working.