The diagnosis is clear in the South American country. Several professionals and technicians are willing to work on employability, innovation and development.

An article written by the specialized journalist Paula Urien for the Argentinian newspaper La Nación, points out several issues that generate concern about the future of work in Argentina.

One of these issues is robots replacing humans to do certain jobs, particularly those that include repetitive tasks. Another example, and one that is more urgent for the current situation of Argentina and the region, is the fact that young people pursue college degrees in disciplines that the labour market does no longer demand. Meanwhile, certain positions cannot be filled as there are no workers trained to do the job. Students leaving early secondary school is another key issue.

The Argentinian Ministry of Education declared that only 27% of students enrolled in university choose applied sciences (engineering, biotechnology or electronics), which are degrees that the labour market strongly demands. Furthermore, only 16% of these students graduate from college. Meanwhile, 38% of students go for social sciences degrees, even though its’ labour market is saturated. Besides, only 56% of them graduate.

In Argentina, the unemployment rate has gone down to 6.6% due to the withdrawal of the workforce from the labour market. In other words, between 890.000 and 3.6 million people have stopped looking for a job and become discouraged. Although the country faces several serious problems, this problem is particularly important.

During the 51° IDEA Colloquium, -a local annual event that gathers businessmen, politicians and experts in economics and employment-, there was a debate about this situation among specialists. They all agreed that better planning is needed in order to channel vocations that lead to better employment opportunities.

The situation in Argentina is rather complex: 64% of people aged between 25 and 30 years old have not graduated from high-school, and therefore find it hard to get a decent job. In addition, even though the country invests a lot of money in education, the results from the last Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), revealed that the quality of education is very poor.

The Argentinian Institute for Social Development (IDESA) analysed official data from the National Institute of Statistics (INDEC) that shows that 65% of people aged between have a low level of education and have not graduate from high-school; 35% have a mid-level and have graduated from high-school; and only 19% have college or technical degrees.

The country has to deal with several employability problems and part of that deficit can be found in the organization of secondary school. In Argentina, secondary school seeks to prepare students to go to college and fails to provide an immediate employment opportunity in a market with a very strong demand.

Javier Goñi, president of the 51° Annual IDEA Colloquium, and general manager of Alpargatas, said that “employment creation is at a standstill. The creation of real and decent work is key to achieve progress and growth and to dignify people. It is a useful tool to tackle insecurity, drug trafficking and a type of culture in which the lack of formal employment has corrupted human values”.

Jorge Colina, economist at IDESA, suggested implementing changes in secondary school education in order to encourage an employment revolution in the country. This includes connecting secondary school with companies to train students for work from an early stage.

Colina says that the key is to compete WITH digitalization and automatization, a strategy that shall demand the development of the following sets of skills:

Scientific intelligence: capacity to design and program machines that shall automatize people’s lives.

Creative intelligence: innovative ideas, artistic sense, sense of humour, intuition.

Social intelligence: capacity to relate with others, sensitivity, persuasion, sense of opportunity, team spirit and leadership.

Santiago Bilinkis, entrepreneur and technologist says that the future is extremely important for education. However, he claims that only a few things have improved about the way we educate people and that teachers tend to be reluctant towards change.

Clearly, this clashes with a local and global labour market perspective that shows us that in the near future there will be jobs that may seize to exist, particularly those related to services, sales, administrative jobs, telemarketing, auditing, real estate agents and firemen, among others.

Young people follow courses of study to work in a job that five years from now shall be obsolete. In other words, they are preparing for a job that will no longer exist in a very short period of time.

In spite of the rather gloom description made so far, there are also good news. Argentina has a top level human capital in areas such as neurosciences, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation.

In addition, Buenos Aires was recently awarded with the Global Entrepreneurship Cities Challenge, a competition among 50 cities from all over the world that annually summons metropolitan areas that promote entrepreneurship.

Source: La Nación