An Education Needs Assessment of CARIFORUM Firms

Text Box 2 : Jamaica’s Business Process Offshore Services Industry Case Study

CASE STUDY - JAMAICA

In 2018, a case study was undertaken examining Jamaica’s position in the offshore services industry. At this stage Jamaica was in the early stages of the value chain with firms providing customer support services mainly composed of third-party call centers fr om the United States. In 2016, Jamaica’s offshore services industry employed over 25,141 persons. An important determinant for participation in the value chain is the availability of human capital expertise as well as labour costs. Applicants are screened based on their formal education mainly at the tertiary level and to a lesser extent graduates. Secondary level educated employees are given competency evaluations to assess critical skills. These skills (which are applied consistently across countries in the value chain) include thinking, creativity, and complex problem solving. One major challenge however threatening Jamaica’s competitiveness in enhancing or upgrading its participation in the value chain is the adequacy of the quality education needed to meet the demands of the offshore services industry.* Students from the tertiary level for example lacked the most basic technical and soft skills to become employable and to ensure quality delivery of high value-added services, even in the lowest segment of the GVC. These skills included: 1. Technical skills -basic computer literacy, communication, written and oral English. 2. Soft skills - work ethic, leadership, service orientation and multi-tasking. 3. Relevant domain proficiencies - accounting, data encoding, graphic design, web analytics, audit.

* Reasons quoted for this includes inequitable access to tertiary studies and brain drain

Source: Couto and Fernandez-Stark (2018)

Some future opportunities for CARIFORUM states to participate in GVCs include agriculture with

a focus on high-value goods, outsourcing with a focus on evolving toward higher value services,

creative industries, health and wellness sector, and blue and green economies, among others (see

Annex 2 for a more detailed list of some future GVC opportunities for CARIFORUM states).

1.2.3. Demographical Change

Demographical change is a defining and complex feature of the labour market, with considerable

heterogeneity across regions. For example, the working-age population in Sub-Saharan Africa is

expected to increase between 2015 to 2040 but stagnate in Latin America and decrease in East

Asia and advanced economies (ILO 2019). From a global perspective, approximately 40 million

people will enter the labour market annually, creating a need for 520 million new jobs by 2030 to

match this projected increase. If one considers increases in female and older worker labour force

participation and migration flows, this number is likely to be higher as even more jobs will be

needed (ILO 2019).

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