Welcome to the Era of “New Collar” Jobs

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For a cognitive and cloud platform company like IBM, the STEM Discovery Week (24-30 April) is the perfect moment to reflect on the opportunities business-education collaboration offers to schools and companies to improve STEM teaching, learning and careers and on the evolving STEM skills as we enter the digital world.

Three things are true in STEM: It is crucial to enthuse students very early in their school career for STEM. There are a lot of job openings requiring a new type of skill sets.  And there are not enough qualified people to fill these jobs.

Sharing our passion for STEM with students

Starting early in sharing our passion for STEM activities is what we do. For example, by giving the opportunity to 10 year old to visit the IBM premises, to see developers working with BlueMix, to see data analytics consultants in action and to call upon their creative talents and participate in their very first Design Thinking workshop.  But also by providing role models to engage with 8 or 10 year old in schools, IBM introduces the possibilities opened up by STEM qualifications, the variety of people employed in STEM-related jobs and the range of roles available. Meeting someone with a personal enthusiasm for STEM subjects can have a huge impact on students, inspiring them to consider a STEM career.

Programs such as TechClass, which we ran in collaboration with Unizo, and Girls Tech Fest, which we helped deliver with NGO Digital Leadership Institute in Brussels, have turned out to be excellent platforms where IBM has connected STEM ambassadors with 10 to 16 year old. Through fun and hands-on workshops, those outreach initiatives have been able to demonstrate the creative aspects of STEM and show that it is about solving problems not just solving equations.

Disruptive changes require a new type of skillset

Organizations around the world are dealing with disruptive changes in business and technology that are having a major impact on economies and employment. As many companies in Belgium and elsewhere are creating markets and revitalizing industries, there are new dynamics shaping the global labor market.

The nature of work is evolving – and that is why so many technology-related jobs remain hard to fill. As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills – which requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting. Skills matter for all of these new positions, even if they are not always acquired in traditional ways.

This is not about white collar vs. blue collar jobs, but about the “new collar” jobs that employers in many industries demand, but which remain largely unfilled.

Many of these new collar jobs are in the field of cyber-security, data science, artificial intelligence, cloud, and much more.

The demand for new collar skills will continue to grow, and we need to increase the number and nature of opportunities made available to workers. Closing the high-tech skills gap could fill millions of jobs around the world – but only if large-scale training, and public private partnerships, can better connect many more workers to the training they need.

In order for our country to remain at the forefront of innovation and not lag behind, we must address the disconnect between the skills required for 21st century jobs and young people’s ability to acquire those skills. Fixing this will require us to evolve our approach to education and training.
New collar skills can be learned through modern vocational training, innovative education programs like P-TECH (which IBM pioneered), coding camps, 21st century apprenticeships, professional certification programs and more. There are now more than 60 P-TECH schools around the world, with another 20 opening this year.
By emphasizing new collar skills, organizations can focus on hiring for capability, not just credentials, and on offering a greater range of pathways to career success.

We must work to reform education policies and strategies worldwide to address the shortage of high-tech talent – and prepare more people to succeed in today’s job opportunities, and build a future of growth and prosperity.