Some 69% of Israel's workforce, or 2.7 million workers, will need to acquire new professional skills to remain relevant in the workforce, according to the State Comptroller’s Report released on Monday.
However, the current environment for professional training programs is lacking, and the government should work to encourage greater participation, the report said.
The fast pace of changing technologies stands to make many non-academic and low-skilled workers redundant in the labor market as their jobs become automated or eliminated, the report said. Therefore, embracing lifelong learning programs is worthwhile for all adults, whether employed or not.
However, the comptroller found, current training programs available are seen as cumbersome by most people. Existing programs don't actually train many workers, and don't include their employers in the process.
In addition, retraining programs are perceived as expensive, and 25% of adults who want to participate in such programs say they don't for financial reasons. Furthermore, the report found that the wide range of different programs available in the market, with no clear leader or source of information, makes it harder for people to choose a program and sign up for it.
In 2018, just 53,000 people took part in various training and tech programs, at a time when 600,000 jobs, or 15% of the entire labor market, were considered at risk of disappearing in the coming years. The haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and Arab sectors suffer from the biggest lack of job training.
Meanwhile, the report found that the problem of missing workforce skills actually starts in school. Some 29% of youth in each grade of school do not participate in academic learning or paid training programs. The level of English taught in high schools and in training programs is not sufficient for the workforce, and 40% of 12th graders either tested in the matriculation tests at the low English level of three units (out of five) or didn't take the English test at all. Both problems are more prevalent in areas with weak socio-economic representation, and are likely to harm students' abilities to join the workforce in the future, the report said.
The report concluded that the government doesn't have a plan for encouraging more people to get professional training, and recommended that it gets more involved by adapting training programs to market needs and offering incentives for employed and unemployed people to continue learning. This is more relevant than ever in light of the coronavirus crisis and the damage sustained by numerous sectors of the economy.
In a separate report focusing specifically on jobs in the hi-tech sector, the state comptroller noted that while that sector produces 12% of Israel's GDP, the country suffers from a chronic lack of supply of trained technologists.
Here as well, the report said, the problem starts with education. Of students who began their university or academic studies in math and technology fields, 22% don't finish their degree within six years, and 20% graduated with a different degree than they had started.
In addition, there is a lack of qualified teachers for math and science subjects in the universities, and the high school education system is not maximizing students' potential to prepare for work and the army with technology and math studies, especially in the periphery, the report said.
The report noted that just 31% of people working in hi-tech jobs are women, and only 4.9% are haredi or Arab. It recommended developing more training programs for hi-tech, especially in the Arab and haredi sectors. The state comptroller called to add more technology and science teachers in the universities, and to work to reduce dropout rates for those fields.