Economist 上专题的最后一部分
Learning and earning
学习与收入
Such specific expertise is meant to be acquired on the job, but employers seem to have become less willing to invest in training their workforces. In its 2015 Economic Report of the President, America’s Council of Economic Advisers found that the share of the country’s workers receiving either paid-for or on the-job training had fallen steadily between 1996 and 2008. In Britain the average amount of training received by workers almost halved between 1997 and 2009, to just 0.69 hours a week.
这些专业技能理应于在工作中获取，但是用人单位似乎并不愿意在培训劳动者方面投资。America’s Council of Economic Advisers 在其 2015 年总统经济报告中指出，1996 至 2008 年间，接受付费或者伴随工作培训的劳动人员比例正在稳定下降。在英国，从 1997 年到 2009 年劳动者每周接受培训的时间大约下降了一半，只有 0.69 个小时。
Perhaps employers themselves are not sure what kind of expertise they need. But it could also be that training budgets are particularly vulnerable to cuts when the pressure is on. Changes in labour-market patterns may play a part too: companies now have a broader range of options for getting the job done, from automation and offshoring to using self-employed workers and crowdsourcing. “Organisations have moved from creating talent to consuming work,” says Jonas Prising, the boss of Manpower, an employment consultancy.
或许用人单位并不清楚他们需要哪些专业技能。但也可能是因为当经营成本增加时，给劳动者提供培训这部分预算更加容易被削减。就业市场的变化同样造就了这一现象：从自动化到离岸工作和众包，用人单位实现目标的手段正在多样化。Manpower ，一家就业咨询机构的老板 Jonas Prising 指出，“组织结构已从创造性转移到消费性。”
Add all of this up, and it becomes clear that times have got tougher for workers of all kinds. A college degree is still a prerequisite for many jobs, but employers often do not trust it enough to hire workers just on the strength of that, without experience. In many occupations workers on company payrolls face the prospect that their existing skills will become obsolete, yet it is often not obvious how they can gain new ones. “It is now reasonable to ask a marketing professional to be able to develop algorithms,” says Mr. Sigelman, “but a linear career in marketing doesn’t offer an opportunity to acquire those skills.” And a growing number of people are self-employed. In America the share of temporary workers, contractors and freelancers in the workforce rose from 10.1% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015.
所有的这一切，使得各行各业的劳动者的生活变得更加困难。对于许多工作而言，大学毕业证书仍然是必要条件，但用人单位常常并不会忽视工作经验而倚重学历。在许多情况下，公司员工往往面临着现有的技能将变得过时，而未来如何获取新技能则不是那么的清晰。Sigelman 先生说：“现在让一个市场营销专家拥有开发算法的能力并非稀奇，但在正常的市场营销人员的工作轨迹中并没有去学习这些技能的机会。”越来越多的劳动者正在成为自由职业者。在美国，临时工、合同工以及自由职业者在劳动大军中所占的比例从 2005 年的 10.1% 上升到 2015 年的 15.8% .
Reboot camp
The answer seems obvious. To remain competitive, and to give low- and high-skilled workers alike the best chance of success, economies need to offer training and career-focused education throughout people’s working lives. This special report will chart some of the efforts being made to connect education and employment in new ways, both by smoothing entry into the labour force and by enabling people to learn new skills throughout their careers. Many of these initiatives are still embryonic, but they offer a glimpse into the future and a guide to the problems raised by lifelong reskilling.
答案看起来很明显。为了提高竞争力，给初级和高级工人同样的成功地机会，市场需要提供面向劳动者整个工作生涯的培训和专精于职业的教育。本期特别报道将会聚焦于那些致力于链接工作和教育的，在助力劳动者更快的进入就业岗位的同时让人们在整个工作生涯中学会新技能的新方式。这些想法许多还处于萌芽状态，但他们为终生学习所提出的问题指出了一个方向也为我们提供了对于未来的惊鸿一瞥。
Quite a lot is already happening on the ground. General Assembly, for example, is just one of a number of coding-boot camp providers. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by companies such as Coursera and Udacity, feted at the start of this decade and then dismissed as hype within a couple of years, have embraced new employment-focused business models. LinkedIn, a professional-networking site, bought an online training business, Lynda, in 2015 and is now offering courses through a service called LinkedIn Learning. Plural sight has a library of on demand training videos and a valuation in unicorn territory. Amazon’s cloud-computing division also has an education arm.
许多的想法正在被实践中。比如 General Assembly 就是众多变成试验园区的一个。Coursera 和 Udacity 等公司提供的大规模在线课程（MOOCs），在本十年收到追捧并在几年内大肆传播，结合了新的就业为导向的模型。LinkedIn 一家专业的职业社交网站，在 2015 年提供了名为 Lynda 的在线培训，现在通过 LinkedIn Learning 的服务提供共在线课程。Plural sight 有一家面向就业的图书馆以及提供对于独角兽公司的估值。Amazon 的云计算同样有教育分支。
Universities are embracing online and modular learning more vigorously. Places like Singapore are investing heavily in providing their citizens with learning credits that they can draw on throughout their working lives. Individuals, too, increasingly seem to accept the need for continuous rebooting. According to the Pew survey, 54% of all working Americans think it will be essential to develop new skills throughout their working lives; among adults under 30 the number goes up to 61%. Another survey, conducted by Manpower in 2016, found that 93% of millennials were willing to spend their own money on further training. Meanwhile, employers are putting increasing emphasis on learning as a skill in its own right.
大学则更加热烈地拥抱在线教育以及组合学习。像新加坡等地区正在大力投资为其公民的工作生涯提供教育贷款。越来越多的个人同样正在接受持续升级的需求。Pew survey 的民调显示，54% 的美国人认为在工作生涯中学习新技能是不可或缺的；30 岁以下的成年人中持有此观点的比例则上升到 61%。Manpower 的另一个民调则显示，2000 年之后就业的劳动者愿意自费来接受培训的比例为 93%。同时，就业单位也越来越强调学习能力作为技能的重要性。
