Employment and Manpower Planning Techniques

How to determine the future training needs of the labour market in developing countries is a question that has confronted manpower analysts and educational planners for decades. There is no easy solution simply because no one can forecast the future and, therefore, what labour demands are likely to be, anymore than one can predict stock market movements or future economic growth rates. This has not stopped people from trying. However, models to perform manpower analyses have been subject to such scathing criticism that, as will be seen in this chapter, manpower practitioners have shied away from modelling techniques and as such, there is a gap to be filled. As of now a combination of techniques under the general heading of ‘labour market signalling’ has become the accepted method, in recent years, to assess manpower needs. However, few countries have created a system to do this and there is much theorizing but little action.