Is the 'Forgotten Middle' Lacking Digital Skills - or Access - or Something Else?

It may well be true that the forgotten or  disappearing middle class - especially those of middle age - lack advanced digital skills. But that prompts several questions: why do they lack those skills, how much would they actually make if they had those skills and what is society willing to pay to provide the necessary opportunity to learn?

The larger issue may be that many of the jobs people with upgraded skills might get could soon be supplanted by computerized algorithms. And even those who could hold on to such jobs might find that the financial rewards are lacking because outside of a few famous high tech firms, tech jobs dont pay all that well. Which leads to the conclusion that maybe tech training - which no private sector enterprise or its investors seem willing to fund anyway - isn't the panacea some say it is. JL

Emma Dunkley reports in the Financial Times:

Millions of people are struggling to learn skills (and) are also at risk of being alienated from digital developments in certain sectors owing to a lack of efficient internet and mobile access. There is a “really strong” negative relationship between countries’ level of income and susceptibility to automation.

Millions of people are struggling to learn skills. The head of Barclays’ retail bank will claim that Britain faces creating a “forgotten middle” group of people who are “simply getting by” online.Many of these people are at risk of falling behind in the workplace and could struggle to protect themselves from cyber crime, he will argue. Businesses could find it tough to combat increasing digital competition.

“The digital revolution is happening right now, it affects each and every one of us on a personal level, at a business level, and now increasingly at a societal level too,” he will say.
“We must also now ask ourselves if the UK is fully equipped to compete in the global digital economy. I want leading UK businesses to do more because we cannot allow the UK to get left behind.”
Other countries are powering ahead with digital advances, he will warn. India is digitising identity records, while school children in South Korea are learning advanced coding.
“We should be doing everything in our power now to help British people, and companies, embrace the new opportunities of the digital revolution with confidence,” he will add.
Barclays plans to publish a digital index in the next few months, to benchmark the UK against nine other leading economies in this sector, and help identify what improvements are needed to remain at the forefront of economic growth.

But thousands of people in Britain are also at risk of being alienated from digital developments in certain sectors, such as banking, owing to a lack of efficient internet and mobile access.

Anthony Browne, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, said last year: “It is vital that the government invests more in 4G and high-speed broadband to ensure that as many people as possible can be included in the revolution that is sweeping through banking.”
Some 530,000 adults have limited internet speed in Britain, of which 330,000 said they would be willing to bank online, according to research by consultancy company Caci. About 63,000 people in parts of Wales and Scotland and small pockets of England still have no acceptable digital access at all, Caci said.

Other research suggests increasing automation will hit the poorest nations the hardest, with 85 per cent of all jobs in Ethiopia in danger of being lost, according to research by Citi, the US bank, and the Oxford Martin School, a research and policy unit of Oxford university.

Carl Benedikt Frey, co-director of the Oxford Martin programme on technology and employment, said there is a “really strong” negative relationship between countries’level of income and susceptibility to automation.