• Globalisation and technological progress have impacted the well-paid ‘blue-collar’ jobs negatively, apart from disrupting routine office work. Addressing a skills gap by training workers sounds great in theory, but various studies point out to a different reality: skilled workers are already in oversupply.
• The problem arises from the retraining occupations that workers are doing, which may not be what the industry requires, but just a small fraction of the total vacancies. Add to this the fact that technology itself is automating tasks at a brisk pace, eliminating thousands of jobs altogether.

The push towards reskilling is not a scam, but merely a misalignment of incentives and a myopic focus on ‘skilling’, which does not shine a light on the numerous other factors that prevent people from getting new jobs, or keep them stuck in dead-end jobs:

1. Lack of interoperability bet...