Small increase in labour demand, especially for high-skilled professionals

‘Public #employment services top growth #occupations show a shift towards #high-skilled occupations’. See http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=737&langId=en&pubId=7434

If the employment needs are higher for graduate from higher education (which had been reported earlier as well), all efforts should be aimed at stimulating participation in higher education. However, current austerity measures counter-act that. Western societies have to think about the risk this involves. It will put even more pressure on human resource development and life long learning than is currently the case. Is it realistic to expect that sufficient workers will develop themselves from lower and intermediate education level to higher education level? This level-increasing life long learning takes more that just work experience and a couple of courses. Keep in mind that one year education equals around 1,600 study hours. That is far more than the couple of days per year most workers spend on training and development. Of course the regular working place is a learning place, but that does not automatically means that all workers who are actively engaged in workplace learning break through the glass ceilings of jobs for lower and intermediate level educated employees.

Who will bear the costs of that?