In March, IER Director Chris Warhurst was invited to participate in an expert roundtable on skill in R&D, hosted by the UK Government’s Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). His contribution focused on skills for innovation.

It complements research led by Professor Terence Hogarth for BEIS on the talent pipeline for UK R&D.

The Institute for Employment Research with the Edge Foundation facilitated the latest in a regular series of workshops with the Directors of Skills of Mayoral Combined Authorities on 10th March.

The workshops provide an opportunity for the Directors of Skills to discuss issues which are most relevant to them and share experience and practice. This is especially important given the role that the Mayoral Combined Authorities will play in supporting their local economies to emerge from the impact of COVID-19.

The workshop also included a presentation on Good Work by Gail Irvine of the Carnegie UK Trust and Chris Warhurst, Director of IER. Both Gail and Chris were involved in the Taylor Review of modern working practices, and have both been involved in the post-review working group on developing the recommendations.

Peter Dickinson, Senior Research Fellow at IER, has been appointed to the What Works Growth’s Evaluation Panel. The panel provides advice and support to central and local government on the design and implementation of evaluations of local economic policies. It helps ensure evaluations are high quality and supports policymakers in developing their evaluation skills, knowledge and capacity. Over the longer term, it will also expand the evidence have about ‘what works’.

Peter has also been appointed to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) roster of consultants providing advice, expertise and support on skills policy and practice.

Despite information failures in the labour market and their consequences on unemployment and informality rates, countries like Colombia lack a proper labour market information system to identify skill mismatches and employer skill requirements.

The use of online job portals as a potential source of labour market information has recently gained researchers’ and policymakers' attention. However, debates continue about the efficacy and robustness of job portals for labour market analysis.

This new book by Jeisson Arley Cardenas Rubio contributes to our current understanding of the topic by developing a conceptual and methodological approach to identify skills, occupations, and skill mismatches using online job advertisements, which would otherwise be too complex to analyse.

Britain produces too much of relatively low value compared with many of its western counterparts. This is despite the country being a world leader in many industries. It is the country’s perennial productivity problem.

Improving skills supply is seen as one of the principal means by which the country’s productivity levels will be raised. But what does improving skills supply mean? Sometimes it seems to refer to matching – if only it were possible to ensure that skills supply better matched the jobs available matters would improve. And sometimes it refers to raising the level of skills, even if there is a degree of uncertainty about how much demand there is for any additional higher skills. If Britain, or more precisely England, is to increase its productivity through the improved supply of skills - however that might be defined - it might well need a bold, new skills strategy to do so. Does the latest Skills for Jobs White Paper fit the bill?