Future of Infrastructure: Skills are the Currency of the Global Workforce

with Karin Kimbrough

We discuss what infrastructure investments means for green jobs and women, and how we can expect the job market to shift in the coming years.

Episode 34: Future of Infrastructure: Skills are the Currency of the Global Workforce

Public Sector Future

Episode summary

Karin Kimbrough is the Chief Economist at LinkedIn and an expert in the global workforce. With increased global investment in infrastructure, a skilled workforce is needed to meet that demand. In this conversation, we discuss what this investment means for green jobs and women, and how we can expect the job market to shift in coming years.

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What does global investment in infrastructure mean for the workforce?

Karin Kimbrough is the Chief Economist at LinkedIn and an expert in the global workforce. With increased global investment in infrastructure, a skilled workforce is needed to meet that demand. In this conversation, we discuss what this investment means for green jobs and women, and how we can expect the job market to shift in coming years.

What does LinkedIn’s Chief Economist do?

Karin Kimbrough describes her role as trying to “understand the world of work, what the current trends are, what’s coming around the corner”. LinkedIn’s data covers 800 million users and 60 million companies, which brings a unique perspective on the global labor market.

Kimbrough explains that the insights gained from that data bring an opportunity to create transparency and to help people understand what skills they need to be successful in their career.

What is a Green Job?

As infrastructure investments continue to be made, Kimbrough explains that while there are currently only around 5% of roles within the ‘green space’, that these roles are increasing at a faster pace than ‘non-green’ jobs.

Kimbrough shares that “if you are a worker with a couple of sets of green skills, maybe something in sustainability or something, you know, even more explicitly in ecology, you have a much higher chance of getting hired faster than if you don’t have those green skills for the same role.”

“We think about jobs in terms of like are there actually explicitly green jobs like a solar technician, or are there jobs that are getting greener? So a civil engineer or someone in construction, those jobs are getting greener,” explains Kimbrough.

Jobs that are clearly part of the green economy are joined by jobs that are adjacent to the green economy.

Skills are the currency of the global workforce

Kimbrough explains that generally skills required for any job are changing over time, and highlights the increased importance of skills in sustainability, digital economy and technological transformation as trends.

She predicts that looking forward ten years, there could be a “40% or 50% rotation in the skills that are required for any particular job.”

Kimbrough highlights the importance that employers are placing on skills in recruitment, in contrast to educational background or network. She explains that understanding skills “is a really powerful tool for improving that match between employers and employees”.

“We’re seeing employers increasingly using skills as that kind of first litmus test, if you will, of what they’re looking for. And then when they do look at skills, as opposed to say, just where I went to school or who I know, they have a 60% better chance of getting a good match, meaning they get a better candidate that’s better suited for the role.

So, we know that skills really are this currency for the global workforce, and we know that when you have green skills, it’s accelerating that sustainable, green economy.”

Making sure the right skills are created

In the context of generating the right skills to make sure the future workforce can meet the sustainability needs of the future Kimbrough highlights examples from governments in Europe who have subsidized apprenticeship programs.

“In Europe, there’s been a couple of countries [that] have different apprentice programs that actually subsidize companies that want to bring on young folks who may be less skilled and give them a two-year stint in a company. And then at that point, they can decide, you know, the company can decide whether they keep the person, and the person has kind of built up a little bit of a resume of experience and learned a few skills. And that kind of government-led opportunity, I think, is one way we’re seeing how do we move forward”.

In addition she highlights the role of the private sector in making clear statements and taking action on sustainability goals. She highlights the skills required for managing supply chains and transport as an area with “some of the fastest accumulation of green skills”.

Leadership and Perspective

Kimbrough explained that LinkedIn makes data on skills and trends available, along with monthly newsletters explaining what’s happening in the world of work. One area which this data focuses on is employment trends for women.

Kimbrough outlined that according to LinkedIn’s data, “Globally there’s no industry where there’s parity in leadership roles between men and women. Even in industries like education or wellness and fitness, where half, more than half the workforce is women, you still see this gap in leadership where they don’t have parity, where it’s more men are in leadership.

So that’s the industries that like hire a lot of women. Then there are the ones that traditionally are dominated by men, like construction and manufacturing, and you see the gap is even greater where you don’t even have two out of ten leaders that are women.”

And according to Kimbrough, infrastructure can play a major role in how women enter and just as importantly, stay in the workforce.

“So the race isn’t exactly fair, and I think a lot of it has to do with that critical infrastructure where we saw a lot of turnover, by the way, in the past year and a half, by workers in education and in what I would call that care infrastructure world, not just of daycare for children, but also for elder care, because these jobs are – they’re tough. They’re tough. They didn’t feel safe during a pandemic. They don’t pay an extraordinary amount.

And so as an economist, I can say that as you face more risks and probably barriers and needs for public transport to get to these roles that you might have, and you’re not paid necessarily that much more, it doesn’t become worth it. And so, people start making that tradeoff and they ease out of those roles.”

She also highlights the data on the importance of increased flexibility “We can see that women are 25% more likely to apply to a remote role. And that really underscores the importance of flexibility in making workplaces more equitable for them and accessible.”

To find out more:

LinkedIn’s Economic Graph — A digital representation of the global economy

Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge