The public health crisis has had a devastating impact on people in many different ways.
As we approach a full year of disruption due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the longer term effect on the labour market is becoming visible.
This will be a worry for students who started their studies when the world looked very different and who now face uncertain prospects, but there has probably never been a time when education and training has been more important for the renewal and recovery effort which is to come.
There were 32.5 million people in work in the Ƶ in October 2020; a decrease of 280,000 in one year. Such a fall in employment had not been seen since the global economic crisis in 2009.
However, what made this picture even more startling is that of those 32.5 million, approximately 8 million people had been on government-subsidised furlough schemes, which meant that they were not actually working but paid to stay at home.
By the autumn and winter, with the pandemic renewing its grip and lockdowns re-imposed, we began to see more and more evidence of the social and economic damage caused by the pandemic.
The most recent data collated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that in spite of the furlough scheme, 1.7 million people were registered as unemployed, up by 418,000 on the previous year.
Younger age groups were hit the hardest, making up at least a third of the newly unemployed. At this time it is very uncertain how long it will take for the economy to rebalance and for jobs to return to their previous levels, particularly in sectors decimated by forced closures such as hospitality and tourism, the entertainment industry and non- essential retail.
So what about the picture in Wales? By and large, it mirrors that across the rest of the Ƶ.
There was a decrease in the number of paid employees of just over 30,000 up to last November, and the official unemployment rate stood at 4.6%.
But there are two more indicators which are particularly concerning.
Approximately one out of every six people aged 16 to 24 in Wales is not engaged in any form of employment, education or training. This is worse than in other parts of the Ƶ where it is one out of seven – still far too many of course. And for those looking for work, jobs are more difficult to come by at the moment.
Vacancies across the Ƶ are only about half of what they would be normally and the proportion of permanent jobs advertised is low, although of course there is huge variation between sectors. It is obvious that jobs in health care and IT are plentiful in the current situation, but they require specialist skills and qualifications.
In the midst of this crisis, a talented generation of tens of thousands of young people as well as mature students graduated in summer 2020 from universities and other places of education, full of energy and ambition.
Another cohort will follow in a few months’ time, which will have again seen massive disruption to their lives. So what can be done to harness their potential and to ensure that our society does not witness a lost generation, scarred by circumstances not of their making?
'Reasons to be optimistic'
There are three reasons to be optimistic, especially here at Wrexham Glyndwr University.
The first one is slightly beyond our control: job losses in our region have not been as bad as elsewhere, with manufacturing and pharmaceuticals holding up strongly.
For example, Wrexham is a key site for production of Covid-19 vaccines, supporting hundreds of jobs in the process.
The second reason is the real leadership shown by the Welsh university sector, with funding from Welsh Government not offered in other parts of the Ƶ for the roll-out of a scheme to support our graduates to access work experience, work tasters and paid work placements.
This will help individuals who have graduated during the pandemic with their transition into a more challenging job environment, and of course it will also help the employers.
At Glyndwr we are creating an on-line bilingual community for peer support amongst our graduates, as part of a career planning framework.
We are also financing a project themed “one thousand hours of work experience” which matches graduate skills to identified employer needs in our region.
But by far the most important reason why our graduates should be confident is how well they have adapted to new ways of learning, which will stand them in good stead for new ways of working in the future. The Glyndwr “Active Learning Framework”, affectionately known as ALF, offers digital content created by our own staff, and blends this with interactive sessions on-line or face-to-face on campus when essential.
Students can access this material any time afterwards, so it is flexible.
Demonstrations of how to use engineering equipment, or how to use particular design techniques in the arts, or even how to perform certain clinical tasks in a health setting, can be really effective if they are filmed professionally so students can view them individually and analyse them in group discussions with the lecturer, on the journey to becoming competent practitioners in the field themselves.
We are finding that students are engaging with their programmes and, importantly, with each other even better than under the more traditional approaches pre-pandemic. They have become incredibly adept at accessing digital resources and contributing their own pieces.
Believe me, like many colleagues I look forward to the time when we will see more footfall on the campus again and hear the buzz of students, staff and visitors.
But we will certainly cherish our new-found friend ALF and build on the innovative approaches to teaching and learning we have developed, using a wide range of technologies which do not depend on a presence on campus at all times.
Again, Welsh Government funding for supporting digital capability in the sector has been truly helpful, and sector-leading in the Ƶ.
And our graduates will have that important new string to their bow, no matter what subject they’ve studied: digital fluency.
So they can be confident about future opportunities in the workplace, where such skills will be desperately needed as the economy recovers.
