The labour market of a developing or developed nation must act in a similar fashion – it must self-assess, and seek to metamorphose to adequately respond to the country’s development vision and possible challenges.
Therefore, it is imperative that any country seeks to continuously develop its domestic talent to be able to supply the quality and quantity of labour resources to meet the projected output (productive) capacity of the country. It must invest in the skills for the future.
In other words, if the country determines that it wants to pursue the manufacture of minibuses to supply local and regional demand (if this is an area which can generate economic revenues for the country), then some of its resources should be targeted at increasing skilled labour supply in this field.
If Barbados is to enjoy similar or higher standards of living than those enjoyed in the past, then policymakers, particularly those charged with a human resource development strategy for Barbados and the Social Partnership, must be concerned with strategic expansion of the labour market to meet development needs but also to commensurately absorb graduates, and those non-academics actively seeking employment. Policies to create new sectors or to expand/innovate existing sectors cannot take place effectively without a tandem human resource development policy.
As previously outlined, labour market expansion and development begins with an introspective and strategic look at the development goals and/or imperatives of the country. This could involve sector development, increase in infrastructure development, provision of services, growth in the volume or quality of exports.
The question then needs to be asked, “how will the country support this development path through the capacity which can be added by its human capital?”. (I know of one academic who sneers at the term human capital. I’m sure he’s reading this so to him I apologise)
According to statistics from the Barbados Statistical Service as retrieved from the Central Bank of Barbados’ website, average employment in government has been 25 000, commerce 18 000, tourism 12 000, construction 11 000 and a group labelled other is 25 000. Although significant aggregation occurs in the data presented, there is still scope to expand the employment sectors represented.
Government has spoken openly about pursuing development options in renewable energy, for example. What are the possible career options available as a result of government facilitation to establish this as a sector and a generator of foreign exchange?
There will be those working on the manufacturing facility to engineer or assemble the physical pieces. However, there is still significant value-added to be extracted from research, design, intellectual property, energy storage, and innovative ways to use the energy.
By the way, and just in case I need to remind you, all these factors affected or are affected by labour productivity and factor productivity. As a matter of fact, thinking underpinning this kind of labour market planning can be advanced by use of the global value chain (GVC) tool.
Global value chain analysis isolates the value-adding components of an industry to determine what transformations can be made to, inter alia, sourcing, production, trade, human resources, competitiveness and corporate strategies.
More opportunities to expand the value chain imply added employment opportunities not only in the domestic economy but also for labour in other countries if the company decides to establish itself as a multinational enterprise.
GVCs therefore allow for a geographical spread of economic activity and the spreading of gains (even if not always an equal spreading) from participating in global product markets.
?There are varying levels of investment (both domestic and foreign), revenue, opportunities for value-added, and employment generation and/or creation possible within the value-chain.
There are benefits for the producers, distributors, consumers, entrepreneurs and policymakers. As science, technology and innovation progress, we can expect further improvements in and benefits from the value chain.
??What do writers have to say? Karina Fernandez-Stark, Stacey Frederick, Gary Gereffi appropriately referred to this idea in their paper The Apparel Global Value Chain: Economic Upgrading and Workforce Development.
In this paper they studied the value-improving propositions of five countries in the apparel industry value chains. These were: Turkey,
Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Lesotho and Nicaragua. They note that very often developing countries operate at the lowest segments of the value chain due to various advantages, including provisions within trade agreements, low-cost labour, and proximity to end markets.
In the case of countries which operate at the low end of the value chain as a result of trade agreements, we think of Africa. The continent benefits from trade with Europe through the signing and ratification of the Everything but Arms Agreement (EBA).
The agreement permits full duty free and quota-free access to the EU for all their exports with the exception of arms and armaments. However, the agreement restricts exports from Africa to primary products – not processed or engineered.
Of note is that as of January 1, 2014, the number of countries to “benefit” from the EBA will be reduced from 49 to include only lower-income economies and less developed countries.
The valued-added model is not a new paradigm but indeed one the can be adopted for small resource-scarce economies such as Barbados where innovation, and industry upgrading strategies can potentially introduce new income-earning and employment streams. I will conclude this discussion in another article.
