Colombia Ranks 60th out of 63 Economies in Labor Talent Study

When it comes to labor pool talent, Colombia ranks 60th out of 63 economies studied this year by the IMD World Competitiveness Center.

This represents a decline from the Andean nation’s 55th-place showing in last year’s “IMD World Talent Ranking” and makes Colombia just one of 15 laggard countries to see a score drop over the past 12 months.

“In 2018, the clear majority of countries (48) maintained or experienced an improvement in their capacity to develop, retain, and attract highly skilled individuals, while 15 of them exhibit a decline with respect to last year,” stated the IMD report.

The fall has come largely due to concerns related to “brain drain,” as many talented workers go abroad, and a “relatively low level of investment in education,” according to the study.

Due to these and other chronic factors, only Mexico (61st), Mongolia (62nd), and Venezuela (63rd) fared worse than Colombia in the 2018 edition.

By contrast, the best performers this year were Switzerland (1st), Denmark (2nd), Norway (3rd), Austria (4th), and the Netherlands (5th). Canada (6th) and the United States (12th) were the top-ranked nations in the Americas for 2018, with Chile (44rd) and Argentina (47th) being the leading countries in Latin America

Overall, South America was by far the worst-performing region studied. “These economies struggle in developing and retaining talent and are characterized by low levels of quality of life and reduced availability of skilled labor,” stated IMD about the continent’s economies.

Western Europe, led by high-performing Nordic countries, beat out the rest in terms of average talent ranking followed by North America, Eastern Asia, South Asia/Pacific, Western Asia/Africa, Eastern Europe, former Commonwealth of Independent States/Central Asia, and South America.

The report notes that countries like Colombia that are not improving are likely to have an increasingly difficult time adapting to the workplace of the future.

“Cultivating a skilled and educated workforce is crucial to strengthening competitiveness and achieving long-term prosperity, particularly in the current dynamic landscape where artificial intelligence, robotics and other new technologies constantly redefine the challenges that governments, businesses and society in general will have to face in the future,” states the report.