Session V: Asia’s Growing Demand for Human Resources - Challenges and Priorities

1. Session V: Asia’s Growing Demand for Human Resources - Challenges and Priorities Lord Carey of Clifton

2. Competition is the name of the Game • Look after your people, care for your people, nourish your people, educate your people, and your nation will prosper. This is not only good sense, it is not only good ethics, but it also good business.

3. CHALLENGES education and training, young people, and the care of the vulnerable.

4. Education and Training • Comparative advantage based on the intensive use of cheap and relatively unskilled labour is transitory in nature. • The acquisition of relevant skills and the level of training of the labour force have become increasingly important in recent years. [World Economic Forum Report] • It is quality of the labour force that counts.

5. Youth Employment • Of Major Concern to S.E.Asia • Despite the region’s recovery, young people have found it increasingly difficult to secure decent and productive employment opportunities in South-East Asia. • In Japan, “NEETs” – those not in education, employment or training – are attracting attention as a growing potential problem • ‘Hope makes a good breakfast but a poor supper’.

6. Social Care • As societies prosper, economic growth must keep in step with social protection through a whole network of institutions, obligations and rights . • The poor, the unemployed, the very sick, the mentally ill rarely have the means to speak for themselves and are often forgotten. • ‘There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies’. Winston Churchill

7. THE FUTURE • While the S.E.Asian Economy is in good shape there is a great need to undergird the growth with a commitment to the greatest asset the region has, which is its people and fixing the problems that challenge maximizing human resources are manifold and will take time and much energy