The connection between education and the labor market was at the center of the intervention of the Minister of State Akis Skertsou, at an event of the Public Employment Service (PYPA) on the theme, “Strengthening Greece with Skills for a Sustainable Future». With him, at the same table, were the DYPA commander and national skills coordinator Spyros Protopsaltis, trainers and trainees.

First, “in Greece, the Ministry of Labour, the Public Employment Servicewe are fortunate to now have very important resources […] to be able to support the recovery of the economy, which we see running at a faster pace than the rest of Europe, and which, however, risks running out of fuel if we do not have the properly qualified human resources”.

According to A. Schertso, “right now Greece has an opportunity and a challenge to manage: the opportunity is that our economy is growing, Greece has regained its investment credibility and status, it is an investment destination. We call on international and Greek investors to invest more in our country. This is certified by the numbers, the growth rates, by the rapid reduction of unemployment. But there is also a challenge to be managed” he added – and this is none other than that “over time, we are not doing so well as a labor market, as an economy and as a public administration to make this connection between the needs of the labor market and the skills of our country’s human resources”.

Consequently, he continued, “we must run faster, become better, listen more to the needs of the labor market, make the public administration, the Public Employment Service, which has undergone a significant transformation in the last 2- 3 years. It has been reformed, beyond the name that has changed,” he pointed out, recalling that it was called OAED until two years ago.

And, “with our ‘jobs again’ law it has been renamed the Public Employment Service. OAED, unfortunately, in previous years we mostly saw it as a benefits and unemployment organization, and less as an organization that deals with employment and training, with how to get more people into the labor market and how to get them out of the trap of unemployment, dependency on benefits” he pointed out.

But, he clarified, “we have a lot of work ahead of us, Greece has to manage some more problems and structural weaknesses. The fact that we have a significant part of the active age population outside the labor market in three main groups, the young, women and people who are 55 years and older, (this) is an additional burdensome factor for the Greek economy and labor market . Training programs must target even more, even more emphatically, these three groups, young people, women or employed/unemployed people over 55, so that they can match their skills to the needs of the labor market.’ And, “of course to work much more closely with the business community of all sizes, with the representative bodies. To engage in a continuous conversation with them, to understand what their needs are. How is the economy and technology transforming, what are the new jobs”.

Characterizing as very correct what the vice-president of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, mentioned at the previous table, that “positions are the ones that chase people and skills”, the Minister of State concluded: “We must understand this well, that we must connect the education system much more effectively. It is not only DYPA that does this work, it is also our regular education, the vocational education provided by the public education system” and which also “has been transformed, there have been many important changes in the last four years. The goal is exactly this: to listen more, to become more open to partnerships with the private sector and to equip, through the resources and programs we have, the human resources with the right skills.

At the next point of the discussion, in a personal tone, A. Skertsos said that he has been working for about 25 years, he has changed nine jobs so far. “In everyone’s working life, changing professional roles is the norm. In earlier generations, you were in and out of one job, or at most two. This is no longer the case, therefore we must evolve, mobility in the labor market is an element of the modern knowledge economy. Therefore we ourselves must learn more things. But at the same time, the technological developments, the technological data are also changing. Business needs themselves are changing. We have to adapt to be able to keep our cognitive level at what the market demands.”

This, according to the speaker, “puts in its turn, as a request to the public administration, services such as DYPA to provide these programs, so that workers and businesses can be helped. Greece, in terms of intra-company training, is also very low” he acknowledged and added: “And there we need to take steps, and private sector companies should invest private resources along with the public resources that are already offered, in order to help their employees develop within the same work environment. Therefore, we are dealing with a radically different labor market that should not scare us.” And then, “it’s a message that we have to give here: the economy and technology are changing at a much faster rate than in the past, but […] jobs are not lost, they are transformed. New opportunities, new possibilities are opening up.”

As he emphasized immediately afterwards, “we calculate based on the data we see, that up to half a million Greeks, of different ages and profiles, could be helped by such programs – this is also our goal, through the brave program funding of DYPA but not only”. With the ultimate goal “to help both the employed and the unemployed who have stayed out of the labor market for “x”, “x” reasons in the past period”.

After all, “unfortunately, until the debt crisis, the Greek economy was built on a state-fed growth model. The education system had been set up in a way to give degrees without value, with no real reflection on the professional market and the needs of the economy, with the main goal being to enter the State. This is a model that has collapsed economically, politically, value-wise. It does not serve the needs of society, nor the economy, nor the state, nor, finally, the needs of the people themselves. People want to be productive, creative, to connect better with what really satisfies us and, if possible, to make money from it.”

In fact, “the education system in this must lead from the smallest classes to graduation from High School and then, to post-high school education. Bringing you in touch with who you really are and discovering your true skills. So there is work to be done in basic education as well, in educating children better in understanding who they are, what satisfies them the most, through which activities they feel best. To make the right choice in terms of career choice, whether through general or vocational education. It is not a stigma to choose a technical education” he emphasized.

“Bottom line, we cannot have an economy that is growing, that is internationally competitive, that invests in both innovation and manufacturing and services and the primary sector without having a substantial investment in the education that produces those skills and occupations. We cannot be a monoculture economy that develops only through one sector, this has very specific limits and certainly does not lead to a coherent dynamic and sustainable development” he underlined. In any case, finally, “a proper labor market must obviously have the people who have the right skills, it must have satisfactory wages, it must have labor and worker protection. There should be as few phenomena of undeclared work and abuse of workers as possible. It must incorporate technological developments, have a correct, modern regulatory framework. All these are elements of our own policy for the labor market” assured, closing, the Minister of State.