One of the biggest online-learning platforms, Coursera, has just published its Global Skills Report 2022. In the report, the platform presents data from over 100 million people who have used Coursera to learn new skills concentrating on three of the most important areas: business, technology, and data science. AIN.Captal highlighted the most interesting findings from the report, which can help you navigate the extremely changeable labour market.
Quick summary
- By the middle of this decade, an estimated 85 million jobs may disappear, while another 97 million new ones will take their place.
- Digital skills are the shared language of the modern economy. Not every worker needs to learn how to code, but every worker needs to be literate in digital skills. Three-quarters of workers in a recent survey said that they felt unprepared for jobs in the digital-first economy.
- As workers reskill, the most popular skills in the last year in the technology and data science domains, respectively, were theoretical computer science along with probability and statistics.
- Europe leads the world in skills proficiency. Seven of the top ten performing countries in this year’s report are located in Europe. In addition, for the second year in a row, learners in Switzerland achieved the highest level of aggregate skills proficiency.
Global Skill Trends
The skill trends and proficiency analyses in this report represent a view of the world through the 100 million learners on Coursera.
For each graph in the regional sections, analytics show the percentile rankings of countries within each domain. A country that is at 100% ranks at the top of the 102 countries, while a country at 0% is at the bottom.
These percentile rankings are divided into four categories:
- Lagging: 25th percentile or below
- Emerging: 26th-50th percentile
- Competitive: 51st-75th percentile
- Cutting-edge: 76th percentile or above
As we can see on the global map below, most of the Central and Eastern European countries doing well. For example, countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Bulgaria, and others are on the cutting edge of skill proficiency. Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are among the competitive countries.
As stated in the report, Europe’s competitive advantage lies in high-skill workers.
- Despite the economic toll of russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s markets remain strong. Among the ten countries with the most skilled workers globally, eight are located in Europe.
- Firms seeking talent should look to these countries, while education leaders throughout the region should continue to prioritize training for high-growth, in-demand skills in business, technology, and data science.
- The Digital Markets Act may open opportunities for smaller technology companies. In the spring, the European Union passed new antitrust rules to reduce the market power of American technology giants. When these regulations come into force, they could open space for local firms to recruit high-skill talent. Business leaders should prepare by training this talent now.
- Seven of the top ten performing countries in this year’s report are located in Europe: Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Bulgaria.
Set of competencies in the Global Skills Report
The top skills you must master to stay ahead of the market’s demand are presented below.
Business Skills in this domain focus on the practice and day-to-day running of a business. | Technology Skills in this domain focus on the creation, maintenance, and scaling of computer systems and software. | Data Science Skills in this domain focus on capturing and utilizing the data generated within a business for decision-making and/or powering underlying products and services. |
1) Accounting is about proper record keeping andcommunication of financial information for corporations in accordance with government regulations. Sample skills: Auditing, Financial Accounting | 1) Computer Networking is the process of creating a digital telecommunications network where connected devices exchange data with each other. Sample skills: Cloud Computing, Internet of Things | 1) Data Management comprises everything related to managing and accessing data for reporting, analysis, and model building. Sample skills: Cloud APIs, Hadoop |
2) Communication is the practice of discussion between two or more individuals in written or oral forms. Sample skills: People Skills, Writing | 2) Databases are an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. Sample skills: Relational Database, Key Value Database | 2) Data Visualization involves the creation and study of visual representations of data to communicate information clearly and efficiently. Sample skills: Tableau, Plotting Data |
3) Finance is focused on the efficient allocation of capitaltowards investment opportunities under conditions of risk or uncertainty. Sample skills: Financial Ratios, Blockchain | 3) Operating Systems consists of building system software that provides common services for other types of computer programs. Sample skills: Mobile App Development, C Programming Language | 3) Machine Learning creates algorithms and statisticalmodels that computer systems can use to perform a specific task without explicit instructions. Sample skills: Multi-Task Learning, Deep Learning |
4) Management is about how to set a company’s strategy and coordinate the effort of employees. Sample skills: People Management, Business Analytics | 4) Security Engineering is a specialized field that focuses on the security aspects in the design of systems that need to be able to deal robustly with possible sources of disruption. Sample skills: Cybersecurity, Cryptography | 4) Math is the study of numbers and their relationships, applying these principles to models of real phenomena. Sample skills: Calculus, Linear Algebra |
5) Marketing is the process of creating relationships with potential and actual customers, allowing businesses to identify how they should present themselves and who they should cater to. Sample skills: Digital Marketing, Product Placement | 5) Software Engineering involves applying rigorous principles to the design, development, maintenance, testing, and evaluation of computer software. Sample skills: Software Architecture, Software Development | 5) Statistical Programming is the set of programming languages and tools used to create statistical models and algorithms. Sample skills: R, Python |
6) Sales is focused on taking a company’s products and services to market and transacting with actual customers. Sample skills: Cross-Selling, Lead Generation | 6) Computer Programming is the process that professionals use to write code that instructs how a computer, application or software program performs. Sample skills: JavaScript, Java | 6) Statistics deals with all aspects of data collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation. Sample skills: Regression, AB Testing |
7) Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching and running a new business. Sample skills: Adaptability, Innovation | 8) Cloud Computing involves delivering computing resources, namely hardware, software, or software development platforms via the internet. Sample skills: Software as a Service, Kubernetes | |
9) Human Resources refers to the corporate function of overseeing the various aspects of employment, such asonboarding/offboarding, labor law compliance, employee benefits, and talent acquisition. Sample skills: Benefits, Employee Relations | 9) Web Development is the work involved in developing web sites. It can range from developing a simple static page to complex web applications such as e-commerce sites. Sample skills: Angular, HTML and CSS | |
10) Mobile Development is the process of developingsoftware applications for mobile devices such as mobilephones or tablets. Sample skills: Android Development, iOS Development |