UAE labor market snapshot skills and educational mismatch during industry 4.0

Abstract

The increased penetration of technology which brings efficiency to businesses globally has caused a shift in the skills that are required by the employees. One of the ways that the economy can reap the benefits of the digital revolution is by ensuring the development of appropriate skills that are mandated by the technological economy. Skills and educational mismatch have been noted to have a negative influence on employee and labour market outcomes. Due to this, several studies that focused on diagnosing the phenomena of skills and educational mismatch have been conducted in some developed countries. Despite the rate of economic growth that the UAE has achieved, far too little scholarly attention has been paid to skills and educational mismatch in the country. Therefore, this study’s objective is to measure the extent and nature of skills and educational mismatch from the perception of current workforce in the market. Using quantitative methodology, primary data in the form of surveys was collected from 206 respondents. SPSS was used to analyze the survey data in the form of descriptive statistics and cross tabulations. The results indicated that skills and educational mismatch is prevalent in the UAE across the private and public sector. Moreover, we found evidence suggesting the nature of skills mismatch is skills gap and the type of educational mismatch that is most prevalent in the UAE is horizontal mismatch. The results also indicate that engineers are some of the most affected by both skills and educational mismatch where most of the engineers are not working in engineering jobs compared to business management graduates most of who are working in their field of graduation. This paper contributes by creating new evidence in the area of skills and educational mismatch in the UAE’s labour market. It has bridged a gap by examine the state of mismatch in the UAE which can then allow to establish corrective actions to reduce the said mismatch in the country.