Coronavirus pandemic has affected the job scenario (Representational image/Pexels)
The pandemic has impacted the lives of more than 555 million workers and 200 million higher education students around the world. In India, the unemployment rate reached 27.1 per cent in early May, as nearly 122 million Indians lost their jobs between March and April, as per the latest report of Coursera – online learning platform.
As 37.5 million students have been out of campus, Coursera claims that they are trying to stay relevant by pursuing the skill courses. “To revive jobs and economies, institutions must enable widespread access to skills development so that people can swiftly enter and return to the workforce,” it claims.
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Business, technology, and data science skills are going to be more critical than others and the trend is common across the globe, claims the report. “Over two-thirds of the enrollments by governments, companies, and campuses on the Coursera platform are in courses teaching business, technology, and data science skills,” it said.
Lack of data skills cost India Rs 332 billion every year
Unfortunately, this is the area where India lags. This lack of data skills cost Indian firms productivity worth Rs 332 billion every year, according to a report by Accenture and Qlik.
India lags in data science skills, especially in data management. Within the data science domain, India ranks 51 globally (lagging). Within the data management competency, India ranks 58th globally – only slightly better than Nigeria and Philippines, as per the Coursera report.
Demand for personal development skills like confidence, stress management, and mindfulness has grown by 1,200% among individual learners, it added.
India leads in business technology
All, however, is not lost for India as it has surged ahead of China in business and technology skills. Within the business domain, India ranks in the emerging category (34th globally), whereas China ranks 45th. Within the technology domain, India ranks 40th globally which too is an emerging category. Here too India has surpassed China which is ranked at the 50th spot.
Globally, APAC is an emerging region for data science skills. 12 out of 16 countries in APAC are either lagging or emerging in data science, as per Coursea. Only four countries display competitive skills in data science and India is not one of them. The four nations are – Hong Kong (75 per cent), Singapore (73 per cent) New Zealand (59 per cent), and Australia (54 per cent), says the report.
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