If we are serious about addressing unemployment at scale, we need to do more than bring employers and jobseekers closer together. We need to fundamentally rethink how work is defined, how people are matched to it, and how potential is realised.
Today’s labour market is still built around a relatively rigid, rearward-looking construct: people apply for jobs, jobs are defined by what the last incumbent did, and matching happens based on past experience. But this model is increasingly misaligned with the reality of a fast-changing economy.
At its core, employability is not a matching problem, it is a translation problem. Millions of people possess skills that are transferable across roles and industries, yet our systems struggle to recognise and utilise that potential.
The result is a persistent mismatch between labour supply and demand. Understanding this at scale - across organisations, sectors, and geographies - would provide critical insight into how effectively we are deploying talent in the UK economy.
From jobs to skills: a different labour market model
Consider an alternative perspective - people do not inherently have jobs. They have skills, capabilities, and potential.
If we organise work around those attributes, rather than static job definitions, the labour market becomes more fluid, more adaptive, and ultimately more efficient. In this model, how skills are identified, developed, and deployed becomes a key competitive differentiators for employers.
Someorganisations are already experimenting with internal talent marketplaces; where individuals must continually refresh and demonstrate their skills to secure assignments. While extreme versions of this model raise important considerations, the broader principle of a more dynamic, skills-based workforce is gaining traction.
The Gen Alpha challenge
At the same time, the next generation is entering the labour market under very different conditions. Generation Alpha represents a larger cohort than those before them, yet they are entering a system where traditional entry-level pathways are under pressure and employer demand is evolving.
Support systems are stretched, and career pathways are becoming less linear and more uncertain. This creates a growing risk: more individuals entering a labour market with fewer structured entry points and less visible opportunity.
To address this, we need to rethink how recruitment works:
Instead of defining roles first and filtering candidates against them, we should begin with the individual.
- Pre-assessment of capabilities, behaviours, and potential can enable more effective matching, clearer career pathways, and better hiring outcomes.
- Create structured, searchable talent pools of unemployed and underutilised individuals.
- Pre-assess and profile against employer-relevant criteria so organisations can engage with greater confidence and lower risk.
- Improved access to insight.
- Employer visibility of labour market supply and transferable capability.
- Jobseeker access to recruiter intelligence (understanding where their skills are valued, how competitive different roles are, how to navigate career pathways).
Learning from emerging models
Across the UK and internationally, new approaches are emerging that combine skills-based assessment, talent intelligence, and digital matching.
Pioneered for the Graduate recruitment segment, these models challenge traditional CV-led recruitment and point towards a more integrated and efficient future labour market. While some of these ideas may appear theoretical, the direction of travel is clear.
We need to move towards skills-first thinking, scalable pre-assessment, transparent talent markets, and insight-led decision-making. If we continue to define work narrowly and assess people based only on past experience, we will continue to reinforce inefficiency and exclusion.
A shift towards skills, potential, and better intelligence offers a more inclusive, resilient, and effective labour market for the future.