Nine in 10 U.S. Workers are Willing to Reskill for a New Job

But not for all in-demand jobs, study finds A new study from Boston Consulting Group and ppcast finds that 89 percent of U.S. workers are willing to retrain to a different job role as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. This finding is from the 2021 “Decoding Global Talent” report, which was conducted between October and November […]

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But not for all in-demand jobs, study finds

new study from Boston Consulting Group and ppcast finds that 89 percent of U.S. workers are willing to retrain to a different job role as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This finding is from the 2021 “Decoding Global Talent” report, which was conducted between October and November 2020, according to a release from Appcast, summarizing the findings. The survey received input from nearly 209,000 workers in 190 countries, including more than 6,300 workers in the United States.

The report states that people age 31-40 and those with a master’s degree or above are most willing to retrain for a completely different job function. In terms of industries, telecommunications (68 percent), travel and tourism (61 percent), financial institutions (60 percent), and consumer products and services (58 percent) had the highest percentages of workers willing to reskill. 

White-collar jobs in areas such as IT, consulting, digitalization and automation, and engineering are the most sought-after new roles.

However, the study notes that jobs requiring in-person presence such as service sector, manual labor, and manufacturing were identified as the least desirable by workers. People in those jobs “have a desire to pivot away from in-person and front-line roles and into roles that can be done remotely, such as engineering (25 percent) and IT and tech (19 percent).”

The widespread wish to avoid front-line jobs has contributed to what the report refers to as a “war for talent” and “significant reductions in job seeker activity” as demand for candidates increases due to open positions.

“Over the last few months, we witnessed an unprecedented surge in open positions across many industries, creating fierce competition for talent among organizations of all sizes,” Heather Salerno, Appcast’s senior VP of marketing, said in the release. “As the U.S. economy begins to reopen, this trend will only accelerate, and employers — particularly those within the services sector or that require workers on-site — must adapt quickly to attract and retain workers.”

Boston Consulting Group is a business-strategy and management-consulting firm founded in 1963. It is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Appcast, headquartered in Lebanon, N.H., is a recruitment-advertising and technology company that manages over $500 million in job advertising annually on behalf of more than 1,500 clients.

Details on how to access the full report are available at: https://info.appcast.io/whitepaper/decoding-global-reskilling-and-career-paths-website                    

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