OECD Skills Dashboard: Where Do UK Jobs Differ? FE Soundbite 869

October 17, 2026

Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 869: 17th October 2026. OECD Skills Dashboard: which jobs are in shortage across the OECD but in surplus in the UK?

This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal by FE News: ISSN 2732-4095. We know life is busy, so here's a snapshot of the latest announcements and epic thought leadership articles from sector influencers and thought leaders across FE and Skills this week on FE News.

Gavin’s Reflective Perspective

Martin Taylor's article this week got me thinking a bit more deeply. Martin wrote a piece on the impact of AI on early careers in accountancy. About every second or third conversation I’m having at the moment, in and out of the sector, is asking how much AI affects entry-level roles now, and how much more it will. Martin’s point was that AI can help early-career professionals develop faster rather than replace them.

Which is interesting... much of the “grunt work” in professional services is going to change, much like the calculator, then the spreadsheet, removed manual calculation. What matters is adapting learning, qualifications and skills for AI-augmented roles, while keeping critical thinking. You need knowledge and understanding to think critically.

OECD Skills for Jobs Dashboard: Human Cognitive Skills are very much in demand

That links neatly to the OECD’s new Skills for Jobs Dashboard. Some of the most severe shortages across OECD countries are not highly specialised technical skills, but transversal ones: active listening, reading comprehension, critical thinking, plus social perceptiveness and co-ordination. Human and cognitive skills are still very much in demand, and they transfer across roles, and you would think across jobs and industries that haven’t been created yet.

Which roles are hardest to fill?

In the UK and OECD, health and teaching are the hardest roles to fill. The interesting bit is where they differ. ICT professionals are the third hardest occupation to fill across the OECD, but in the UK there’s a surplus. Managers, business professionals, and science and engineering professionals are the same: short across the OECD, in surplus in the UK. For cleaners, drivers and other lower-skilled, routine roles like labouring and kitchen assistance, it’s the other way round: in surplus across the OECD, but among the hardest to find in the UK.

What are the easiest to fill (I was surprised by this)?

The easiest roles to fill are street sales and service workers (chuggers). I didn’t realise there was a category for street sales, to be honest, but they are the easiest roles to fill! Even more interesting, according to the OECD, the second easiest category to fill is chief executives and legislators… CEOs and lawmakers, surely at the pinnacle of their careers? You’d think critical thinking, technical knowledge and communication skills are all essential for those roles, so how are they among the easiest to fill? ... unless they are thinking they will be replaced by what Donald Trump now calls 'Super intelligence'

Which skills are in short supply?

Across the OECD, the two abilities in shortest supply are verbal abilities and reasoning abilities... in plain English, communication and critical thinking. The UK, the EU, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, France, Portugal, Poland and the US all show the same top two. Active listening and reading comprehension rank high too, along with social skills like social perceptiveness and co-ordination.

Set that beside the AI and entry-level point and it’s really interesting. Human and cognitive skills are still very much in demand, they transfer across roles, and you would think across jobs and industries that haven’t been created yet.

What does this mean for Technical Education reform?

We are redeveloping Technical Education and Vocational right now, across Vocational GCSEs, V Levels, T Levels and Apprenticeships. The dashboard doesn’t measure technical education gaps directly, but it does show where the scarcest skills are, and technical skills like programming and equipment maintenance sit near the bottom of the list.

That doesn’t mean technical skills don’t matter. Electrical and electronic trades workers are in shortage in both the OECD and the UK. It does suggest the scarce ingredient is the human and cognitive skills that sit alongside the technical knowledge. So the question for those developing the new V Levels and Vocational GCSEs, as a foundation into Apprenticeships and future careers, is whether we are building communication and critical thinking into every route, or treating them as add-ons to the technical content?

I hope you enjoy FE Soundbite this week!