The Labour Market Story: The State of UK Skills

The Labour Market Story is an overarching narrative paper that summarises employment and skills in the UK, and four thematic briefing papers.

This paper covers the supply of skills and mismatches between supply and demand for skills. It provides an analysis of the stock of skills in the labour market and identifies skills gaps, shortages, under-use and mismatches in an increasingly polarised labour market.

It explores the nature and extent of skills mismatches, considers how employers, individuals and the state are investing to overcome these. The paper argues that employers need to be more involved in designing education and training courses.

The Labour Market Story is based on research undertaken by the Institute for Employment Studies, the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, Cambridge Econometrics and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.