Reskilling is something that sounds like

资格题库2022-08-02 56

问题 Reskilling is something that sounds like a buzzword but is actually a requirement if we plan to have a future where a lot of would-be workers do not get left behind. We know we are moving into a period where the jobs in demand will change rapidly, as will the requirements of the jobs that remain. Research by the World Economic Forum finds that on average 42 percent of the "core skills" within job roles will change by 2022. That is a very short timeline, so we can only imagine what the changes will be further in the future. The question of who should pay for reskilling is a thorny one. For individual companies, the temptation is always to let go of workers whose skills are no longer in demand and replace them with those whose skills are. That does not always happen. AT&T is often given as the gold standard of a company that decided to do a massive reskilling program rather than go with a fire-and-hire strategy, ultimately retraining 18,000 employees. Prepandemic, other companies including Amazon and Disney had also pledged to create their own plans. When the skills mismatch is in the broader economy though, the focus usually turns to government to handle. Efforts in Canada and elsewhere have been arguably languid at best, and have given us a situation where we frequently hear of employers begging for workers even at times and in regions where unemployment is high. With the pandemic, unemployment is very high indeed. In February, at 3.5 percent and 5.5 percent respectively, unemployment rates in Canada and the United States were at generational lows and worker shortages were everywhere. As of May, those rates had spiked up to 13.3 percent and 13.7 percent, and although many worker shortages had disappeared, not all had done so. In the medical field, to take an obvious example, the pandemic meant that there were still clear shortages of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel. Of course, it is not like you can take an unemployed waiter and train him to be a doctor in few weeks, no matter who pays for it. But even if you cannot close that gap, maybe you can close others, and doing so would be to the benefit of all concerned. That seems to be the case in Sweden: when forced to furlough 90 percent of their cabin staff, Scandinavian Airline decided to start up a short retraining program that reskilled the laid-off workers to support hospital staff. The effort was a collective one and involved other companies as well as a Swedish university. Reskilling in this way would be challenging in a North American context. You can easily imagine a chorus of "you can't do that" because teachers or nurses or whoever have special skills, and using any support staff who has been quickly trained is bound to end in disaster. Maybe. Or maybe it is something that can work well in Sweden, with its history of cooperation between business, labour and government, but not in North America where our history is very different. Then again, maybe it is akin to wartime, when extraordinary things take place, but it is business as usual after the fact. And yet, as in war the pandemic is teaching us that many things, including rapid reskilling, can be done if there is a will to do them. In any case, Swedens' work force is now more skilled, in more things, and more flexible than it was before. Of course, reskilling programs, whether for pandemic needs or the postpandemic world, are expensive and at a time when everyone's budgets are lean, this may not be the time to implement them. Then again, extending income support programs to get us through the next months is expen- sive, too, to say nothing of the cost of having a swath of long-term unemployed in the POST-COVID years. Given that, perhaps we should think hard about whether the pandemic can jump-start us to a place where reskilling becomes much more than a buzzword. Efforts to resolve the skills mismatch in Canada_______.A.have driven up labour costsB.have proved to be inconsistentC.have met with fierce oppositionD.have appeared to be insufficient

选项 A.have driven up labour costs
B.have proved to be inconsistent
C.have met with fierce opposition
D.have appeared to be insufficient

答案 D

解析根据题干关键词Efforts、skills mismatch in Canada定位到第二段最后一句“Efforts in Canada and elsewhere have been arguably languid at best，and have given US a situation?where we frequently hear of employers begging for workers even at times and in regions where uneln—ployment is high”，可以说，其他地方的努力充其量也乏善可陈，这给我们带来了一种情况，即在失业率高的时间和地区，我们经常听到雇主急需工人的消息。由此可知，在加拿大为解决技术不匹配问题做出的努力没有达到理想的效果。D项“似乎并不充分”符合文意，故选D。A项“提高了劳动成本”，原文并未提及劳动成本，故A项错误。B项“证明是不一致的”，虽然也是负面评价，但文中说是乏善可陈，与文章表述意思不一致，故B项错误。C项“遭遇了强烈反对”，虽然也是负面评价，但是并未提及是否遭到强烈反对，故C项错误。

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Reskilling is something that sounds like

英语二研究生

研究生入学