It’s not what you know it’s how you learn it
You would need a brewery to play a drinking game where the trigger words are “jobs” and “digital skills”. But what may matter more than learning a specific skill is the quick capacity to pick-up a new one, and the one after that.
A new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare explains why, “advanced digital skills, like coding and data visualisation, attract a wage premium (but may become redundant quickly).” AIHW says job adverts mentioning Tableau (data visual software) increased 19 times between 2012 and 2018 but Adobe Photoshop dropped from 10th to 31st.
There’s a message for education and training providers; “while the latest and most advanced technical skills represent a lucrative niche in the labour market, basic digital literacy will be valuable for all workers and job seekers.”
And one for their markets; “a key challenge for current and future workers is to be flexible and able to acquire new skills as tasks within jobs change,
“it is likely that businesses will increasingly look at prospective employees’ skill sets rather than specific occupation titles; and workers will need to be able to work across and outside traditional job descriptions.”
Apparently, advocates of a general education were right all along, it’s learning how to think, rather the skill-set of the hour that will generate jobs.