Workforce Development Funding has increased in importance to governments and companies in the past years. It is a method to help us counter the current skills shortage we are experiencing, such as the shortage in IT specialists. Secondly, it is a practical and efficient way for governments to allow industries to train people in the skills needed in the industry.
Following our grants intelligence on funding for workforce development we decided to analyse the data and present you with the results. First, we used two differing data sets, one indicating the total amount of grant available, by each funder type in a particular country. And second, where we evaluated the total aggregate program value for each country, by funder type. Funder types usually are Federal, State and Local Government, we have not included private Grantmakers and non-direct EU funding in this analysis for purposes of simplicity. However, it is important to note that this might impact the coherence in total funding available in a country that is portrayed in this analysis.
One interesting topic we’ve discovered is that the source of workforce development funding highly differs from country to country. We expected countries with a centralized government to issue more funding on the federal and local level and countries that are more federalized to be the opposite and predominantly distribute funding through the state level. Political systems do have an effect on funding type to some extent, but it is not consistent in our observation. The UK, Italy and the Netherlands are leading when it comes to local levels of funding with Italy being an outlier.
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Germany and Spain have larger state funding numbers, both of which are federalised republics with a strong emphasis on state self-management. Further, our analysis uncovered that the Netherlands, Italy and Norway have very little state funding whilst state funding is very limited in Sweden and the UK. On the federal funding level, we see a large number of grants in the UK, Sweden, Norway and Germany. I recommend caution in drawing general conclusions on the basis of our data and background knowledge alone. This has been an exercise in what we have seen governments do up to this point, however, all subject countries have extensive recovery plans in place which are projected to address the very issue of workforce development. We will, therefore, continue to monitor developments and expect a thorough analysis when the ambitious plans are executed.
About The Author
The author is specialised in German funding opportunities, as well as European Structural funding and IPCEI Projects.
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