The UK Employer Skills Survey - undertaken by IFF Research for the Department for Education - and involving 87,000 employers, found that 2.5 million UK workers are overqualified for their jobs. This is an increase of 8.7 per cent of the workforce.
It was also found that 35 per cent of employers were employing staff that were not being used to the best of their ability, due to either not being fully trained or for being overqualified for the job they were holding. This is an increase from 2015 when just 30 per cent of businesses said they had employees who were being underutilised and the equivalent of 7.1 per cent of the workforce was identified as being overqualified.
Many graduates are finding themselves working in jobs that would - in previous generations - have been filled by non-graduates and comparisons across Europe have suggested that this is a particular problem for the UK, with 58.8 per cent of graduates working in jobs that could have been filled by non-graduates.
However, 13 per cent of the employers surveyed stated that they had skill gaps in their workforce and 4.4 per cent were found to be lacking the expertise required to fulfill their role. This was an improvement from 2015 when 5 per cent of the workforce was found to be lacking the appropriate knowledge needed to carry out their work competently.
Duncan Brown, Head of HR consulting at the Institute for Employment Studies – stated:
“Employers need to invest more in training and the right sort of training - and HR functions need to do a better job in evidencing the business case for this and showing that such investments pay off, particularly in SMEs.”
He added:
“We need to continue to improve relationships between employers and education providers, strengthen careers guidance services and do more to encourage lifelong learning.”
The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices - published in July 2017 -recognised that, going forward, there was a deficiency in jobs which match the UKs talent profile as a key labour market.
The report drew attention to the fact that the proportion of graduates working in low-skilled employment had increased from 5.3 per cent in 2008 to 8.1 per cent in 2016.
However, a report published by the Open University last month found that 91 per cent of all businesses had found it difficult to find skilled staff in the last year - with skills shortages costing companies £6.3bn annually in recruitment fees; inflated salaries; hiring temporary staff and training workers.
