Where next for skills?: how business-led upskilling can reboot Australia

Australia has moved through the 'shock' phase of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and is now beginning the management phase that involves secondary outbreaks. Governments are actively seeking to minimise the risk of business failure and business-specific skills loss through a range of general interventions (e.g. JobKeeper) and other skills-specific interventions (e.g. JobTrainer and Supporting Apprentices and Trainees wage subsidy). While it is necessary to focus on the immediate 'shock' and 'management' phases, it is also important to consider what the economy and nation will look like in a post-COVID-19 world. There is a risk that Australians aspire to return to a nation as it was before the pandemic. Such nostalgia would be a mistake; both in the desirability of that previous state and the ability to return to it. The pace and scale of the shock caused by COVID-19 means that Australia has already changed, and further change is inevitable. This report considers: changes arising from the COVID-19 pandemic - particularly given the loss of jobs, the drastic drop in migration, the shift to digital delivery and increased automation; how business needs to deliver more embedded and effective upskilling; and the role governments can play in supporting improved upskilling.

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