As the elec­tion’s min­is and man­i­festos be­gin to trick­le in (and very slow­ly), it is no sur­prise to see the usu­al ref­er­ences to di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion (as ever), job cre­ation, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for all.

Even the of­ten-for­got­ten ed­u­ca­tion gets a look in there and then, but more de­tails on the fun­da­men­tal re­forms need­ed to im­ple­ment the pledges and the im­pact the pro­pos­als will have on the State’s bud­get, so far, have been even less forth­com­ing.

But at least the par­ties are be­gin­ning to talk about the eco­nom­ic fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go and what may be need­ed to walk the path they are sug­gest­ing. A com­plete re­think of what skills we need would be a good start.

Ear­li­er this year, the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum pub­lished the lat­est ver­sion of its bian­nu­al Fu­ture of Jobs re­port.

It won’t come as a sur­prise that one of their main head­lines is the im­pact tech­nol­o­gy is hav­ing (and will con­tin­ue to have) in the jobs mar­ket, es­pe­cial­ly as gen­er­a­tive AI takes off across all sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Ac­cord­ing to the fo­rum, most of the 15 jobs that will see growth over the next five years are di­rect­ly con­nect­ed with the dig­i­tal world, with Big Da­ta spe­cial­ists top­ping the list, fol­lowed by Fin­Tech en­gi­neers and AI/ma­chine learn­ing spe­cial­ists.

The list does car­ry some more tra­di­tion­al ones, like dri­vers for small trucks and de­liv­ery vans (a di­rect con­se­quence of the on­line re­tail boom), and green econ­o­my-re­lat­ed pro­fes­sions such as en­vi­ron­men­tal en­gi­neers and re­new­able en­er­gy spe­cial­ists.

And, as the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion takes hold, oth­er roles are fac­ing de­cline.

The fo­rum lists a few of them, from post of­fice work­ers (as the vol­ume of let­ters con­tin­ues to drop) to bank clerks (as bank­ing moves to apps in­stead of build­ings), re­tail em­ploy­ees and pret­ty much any oth­er role that can be au­to­mat­ed or sim­pli­fied by tech­nol­o­gy, from ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tants to graph­ic de­sign­ers.

This doesn’t mean these jobs will dis­ap­pear al­to­geth­er, but there might not be as many of them in the near fu­ture as more el­e­ments of their work are au­to­mat­ed, even for some IT-re­lat­ed jobs, as AI can al­ready code com­put­er pro­grammes, re­duc­ing the num­ber of coders re­quired.

This al­so doesn’t mean that, at least for the time be­ing, there will be few­er jobs avail­able, lead­ing to in­creased un­em­ploy­ment.

If any­thing, the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion cur­rent­ly needs more, not few­er, peo­ple to en­sure it hap­pens, and the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum’s own pro­jec­tions are that job cre­ation will ac­tu­al­ly be pos­i­tive be­tween now and 2030 (well, at least it was; the re­port was pub­lished be­fore Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump un­leashed an im­port tar­iff pol­i­cy that in­creased the risks of a glob­al re­ces­sion).

The re­al chal­lenge is how em­ploy­ers can bridge the gap be­tween the de­mand for IT-re­lat­ed jobs and those cur­rent­ly in the labour mar­ket.

In oth­er words–there might be jobs aplen­ty, but the risk is that those in need of them won’t have the skills to do what is on of­fer.

We don’t even need a glob­al sur­vey to tell us that. Speak to em­ploy­ers in T&T, and they will talk about the chal­lenges of fill­ing cer­tain roles, even with high­er wages or en­hanced terms and con­di­tions, as the com­pe­ti­tion for skilled labour can be fierce.

Con­verse­ly, we al­so have plen­ty of anec­do­tal ev­i­dence of cas­es of good and com­mit­ted work­ers strug­gling to stick to a job due to a mis­match be­tween their skills and what the roles need, es­pe­cial­ly as new tech­nolo­gies and work­flows are in­tro­duced.

Good em­ploy­ers al­ready do their bit by pro­vid­ing on-the-job train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, but that may not be enough, es­pe­cial­ly as, some­times, the knowl­edge gap is a lot wider.

Take the green econ­o­my, for in­stance.

As­sum­ing elec­tric cars are here to stay, we may need a much high­er num­ber of spe­cial­ists in elec­tri­cals and bat­ter­ies than the cur­rent jobs mar­ket can pro­vide.

Some may come through the up­skilling of those al­ready em­ployed in the au­to­mo­tive sec­tor, at least for elec­tric cars, as some of the me­chan­i­cal el­e­ments re­main the same. How­ev­er, con­sid­er­able up­skilling would still be need­ed, as the un­der­stand­ing and fix­ing of an elec­tric mo­tor is very dif­fer­ent from the knowl­edge re­quired to deal with com­bus­tion en­gines.

But the de­mands for green jobs go be­yond that.

As things stand, we def­i­nite­ly don’t have enough so­lar or wind pow­er en­gi­neers and fit­ters to help boost the take-up of re­new­able en­er­gy for do­mes­tic and in­dus­tri­al con­sump­tion. The field will be even more lim­it­ed for the more cut­ting-edge side of the green en­er­gy world, such as the de­vel­op­ment of green hy­dro­gen for heavy, en­er­gy-hun­gry in­dus­tries.

The big risk is that, just like with the decades-old talk of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion with very lit­tle to show for it, we will end up talk­ing the talk of ed­u­ca­tion re­form and up­skilling with­out de­liv­er­ing lit­tle or noth­ing.

And, to make things worse, the lit­tle skilled labour pool we have can be eas­i­ly lost if con­di­tions here are not at­trac­tive enough. And this is not just about pay (as em­ploy­ers tend to re­spond to mar­ket de­mands) but con­di­tions in gen­er­al, in­clud­ing the lim­i­ta­tions our cur­rent labour laws put on an in­di­vid­ual’s ca­reer de­vel­op­ment or the abil­i­ty to work more flex­i­bly.

As the short­age of crit­i­cal skilled labour, es­pe­cial­ly in IT, is glob­al, em­ploy­ers else­where may be able to lure our tal­ent to oth­er shores, not on­ly be­cause pay may be bet­ter but be­cause of their abil­i­ty to pro­vide more tai­lored work-life bal­ance con­trac­tu­al terms and perks.

A mis­match be­tween the jobs avail­able and those look­ing for work is noth­ing new–that is one of many rea­sons why un­em­ploy­ment is nev­er ze­ro, ir­re­spec­tive of whether the econ­o­my is boom­ing or not.

What makes the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion dif­fer­ent is that this mis­match can eas­i­ly be­come mon­u­men­tal and prob­a­bly as trau­mat­ic as when the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion sud­den­ly turned agri­cul­tur­al so­ci­eties in­to fac­to­ry- and city-based ones, leav­ing many be­hind along the way.

We must be ready to make this work for us.