By 2050, Mexico will train 28.7 million professionals in areas with low labor demand, due to the concentration of young people in traditional fields of study, such as law or administration, according to estimates by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO).
The forecasts of the private analysis center imply a waste of human capital, in a context where technological acceleration, geoeconomic fragmentation, commercial uncertainty, demographic changes and the green transition are shaping the global labor market.
The world’s labor market has been transformed, driven by the emergence of new jobs and a growing availability of information on careers and occupations, according to a report by IMCO.
This environment should have expanded the horizon of professional aspirations of young people, bringing them closer to new fields of study and job opportunities, but, the organization contrasts, the aspirations of Mexicans towards strategic sectors, such as science or technology, have remained practically unchanged in the last 20 years.
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“Students continue to project their future into traditional occupations that no longer reflect the real structure of the economy, which will continue to widen the mismatch between training and employability,” he warns.
It indicates that this disconnection between the educational offer and productive needs threatens to widen the gap between the available talent and that which the labor market will demand.
The result limits individual opportunities and implies economic and social costs for Mexico. In addition, companies face difficulties in filling the positions they require, while thousands of young people are left out of the educational system and the labor market.
In its projections for 2025, the IMCO details that around 65% of future graduates will concentrate in traditional fields, while the rest will pursue careers related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
The five most studied careers since 2005 are Business Administration, Industrial Engineering, Law, Psychology and Accounting, which are expected to continue growing towards 2050.
On the other hand, graduates of natural, exact and computer sciences join the occupations with the highest growth worldwide, including analysts and data scientists and specialists in artificial intelligence and machine learning, but they are one of the fields with the fewest graduates in Mexico, since it accounts for 8% of the total.
The IMCO estimates that the number of graduates in STEM careers will grow 400% by 2050 in Mexico, but training in these areas will continue to lag behind other fields of knowledge.
“Even with this expansion, it is projected that the total number of STEM graduates will be half of that corresponding to careers that are not linked to these areas,” he anticipates.
He adds that the trend regarding the evolution of skills is already manifested in a growing talent shortage, and that seven out of 10 employers report difficulties in filling vacancies according to Manpower, a problem that has intensified in the last decade and that reflects the same trend at a global level.
It states that the alignment of the educational offer with the needs of the labor market is increasingly complex, a situation that is not new, but that has been accentuated in recent years with the emergence of digitalization, automation and artificial intelligence.
The IMCO proposes to build shorter higher education programs that allow students to obtain certifications and skills recognized by the labor market, as well as an updated national information and vocational guidance system, which integrates data on educational supply, labor demand, salaries and sectoral growth projections.
It also suggests non-traditional education models at the regional level in order to grow opportunities in strategic sectors for the country’s productive development, which would allow the formation of human capital to be aligned with the goals of Plan Mexico.
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