Workforce Development in Hong Kong

Abstract

In many industrialized nations, key stakeholders frequently discuss whether the country has adequate talent to successfully compete in an era of rapid globalization. In the US, political and business leaders frequently express alarm at the aging engineering and scientific workforce. Declining enrollments in scientific fields in US universities are juxtaposed against rapidly accelerating graduation rates of engineers and scientists in China and India. This disparity often leads to predictions of severe shortages of science and engineering workers in the US and a loss of US competitive edge unless science and engineering graduation rates can be lifted. Globalization is also causing disruptions in the US workforce, with the outsourcing of high-skilled jobs to India and China. Protectionists say the solution is to raise trade barriers and prevent outsourcing to save quasi-technical, skilled white-collar jobs.