In the first of a two part review of last year and look ahead to the next 12 months, Charlie Ball marks his own homework to see how his predictions for 2022 turned out…
I'd like to apologise for the title, but I'm not going to. One of the traditions we have here on Luminate is that every year I, a man who does not believe that you can accurately predict the future, predicts the year ahead for graduate employment and recruitment.
I also look at last year's predictions, and assess how well I did, which is a win-win for me. Because either I was right, in which case I look tremendously insightful, or I was wrong, which proves me right that you can't predict the future.
Let's start with the review of last year's predictions, which I called What's new in 2022, hence this year's title.
Business concluded a while back that hybrid working works for them, although there are concerning signs it's becoming a culture war talking point.
1. The graduate labour market will continue to improve at first, but may level off later in the year
I got this pretty much spot on. The reason I made this prediction was there were already rumblings that all was not entirely well in the economy (businesses were starting to be concerned about inflation), but the prevailing labour market theme of late 2021 was labour shortage and there were no signs that it would ease in 2022.
2. But employers will still find many kinds of recruitment harder than they're used to
To me, this was an easy prediction. It was clear to me that we are in a long-term period of labour shortage. There are no easy or quick solutions to this at present, and so it was - and is - likely to persist. And so it did.
3. A big year for apprenticeships and 4. The training renaissance?
I'm putting these two together because they were both a bit out, and both for the same reasons. Looking back, I didn't really say what I thought would happen, I said what I wanted to happen (and thought should happen). It looked to me that recruitment issues meant employers looking for ways to mitigate their skills problems, and that to me, investment in training was the obvious way to address it. Anyone who has talked to me about these issues will know that I get quite exercised by the UK's historic underinvestment in adult skills and training, and I fear I was indulging in wishful thinking.
Unfortunately, as the Sutton Trust reported just before Christmas1, the same old issues about the older workers and the middle classes taking the lion's share of good quality apprenticeships still hold, and the UK's recession is already having an impact on business investment.
Note to self: don't say what you want to happen, say what you think will happen. In this case, I ought to have been candid and said 'I'd like these things to happen but they probably won't'.
5. The hybrid future becomes the hybrid now
Again, not the most difficult prediction to make. It was clear that business concluded a while back that hybrid working works for them, and although there are concerning signs it's becoming a culture war talking point - not helped by the undeniable fact that it's mainly graduates who are hybrid working - it's now embedded. And with labour shortage a feature of the UK labour market in the medium term, businesses are likely to be highly averse to annoying hard-to-replace workers.
Notes
- The recent evolution of apprenticeships, The Sutton Trust, 2022.
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