Skill gaps, skill shortages and training firms: evidence from Switzerland

Dual vocational education and training systems are renowned for their strong political support, high level of private-public cooperation, and smooth transitions into the labor market. However, the expanding general education at the upper-secondary level offers employers an alternative avenue of skill provision. Along with shifting educational preferences, general education is gaining ground at the expense of vocational training. In this paper, we scrutinize training firms’ concerns with the dual VET system. We explore factors predicting firms’ worry about their future skill provision and how it is connected to dual vocational training, using novel survey data with 2’700 Swiss training firms. We link the survey data to local labor markets and institutionalized educational pathways. Our study contributes to the scholarly debate on skill gaps and skills shortages, showing which problems and solutions that are specific to firms given the type of work they train for. We issue policy recommendations for firms training for different types of work and for different skill-levels.