There’s new money for job training, but let’s be sure it’s going to the right places — and people, write Lumina Foundation’s Chauncy Lennon and Kermit Kaleba.
A trio of federal program announcements during Q1 2024 unleash funds, people and resources intended to enhance the economic development, health and vitality of under-resourced and overstressed communities and sites.
Readers familiar with Site Selection’s annual Global Best to Invest rankings (forthcoming in our May issue) are also familiar with the expertise of global consultancy Kearney, which recently released its 2023 Global Services Location Index (GSLI) evaluating countries that are most attractive for offshoring of business services. “Overall, the top three countries — India, China, and Malaysia — continue to lead thanks to their immense cost advantage, abundant talent pool and strong skills,” Kearney reports. “India and China also show signs of strength in talent regeneration capabilities, making them global frontrunners in availability of a tech-enabled workforce. Asia Pacific countries remain in the lead (though the Philippines has dropped out of the top 10 and Mexico has climbed from 11 to 10). The United Kingdom has seen a notable change with its move up to fifth place — marking the first time a western economy has entered the top five.”
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Munich has the highest percentage of job postings mentioning digital skills.
Speaking of business services, the newly released Lightcast Digital Skills Outlook 2024 examines digital skills trends across 15 key global labor markets. The report’s City Hotspots section, which measured the percentage of job ads mentioning digital skills, found 57.04% and 55.77% of job postings in Munich and Frankfurt, respectively, mentioning digital skills (the top two percentages among major cities in the 15 markets). London was at the bottom of that list, at just 34.75%.
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Photo: Getty Images
Happy Pi Day, folks. As a refresher, according to How Stuff Works, Pi (π) is an irrational number that has been calculated to 22 trillion decimal places without repetition but can be shortened for calculating purposes to 3.1415926535897 or even 3.14. It is a circle’s circumference divided by its diameter. No matter how big the circle, the value of Pi is constant. We feel the same is true of pie.
