The worrisome deficit of technicians and technologists in Colombia

July 28, 2015

Author: Eduardo Lora

Our work on the labor market for the Colombian Atlas of Economic Complexity has uncovered a massive deficit of technicians and technologists. Technicians are workers trained in a specific task, be it waiters, plumbers, bookkeepers, sport trainers, etc. A technologist is someone who understands implemented systems. For instance, technologists in logistics, or in administrative processes, etc. Out of all online job listings in 2014 that included the level of education required, 57% specified a preference for candidates with technical degrees. Though it is not the most demanded level of education (64% of openings specify a high school diploma or less), it is, without a doubt, the level of education that has the largest difference between supply and demand, as only 11% of Colombians have a technical degree (Table 1).

table showing composition of labor supply and demand and offered salary by level of education

This is the first time there is reliable information for Colombia about the supply and demand of labor for different types of education, as prior statistics about job vacancies were not very comprehensive. Despite this prior lack of evidence, several studies have indicated that there was a deficit of technical professionals. One study found that workers with technical training from SENA (the National Training Service) were between 7 and 10 percent more likely to get a job than similar applicants who had not participated in those programs (Estacio, et. al., 2010), and another found that women with technical degrees are employed more rapidly (Tenjo, et. al., 2015). These findings suggested to some authors that there is some kind of “credentialism” in the Colombian labor market, but no one would have foreseen such a massive deficit of technicians.

Although the starting salary of technicians and technologists is only 1 million pesos per month (approximately $500 per month when converted at the average exchange rate for 2014), this is 23 percent more than what workers with high school diplomas make and only 20 percent less than the salaries of university graduates with degrees after 5 years of study.

Interestingly, the demand for technicians is not concentrated in one particular sector. As Table 2 shows, all of the most active economic sectors in the labor market would be ready to fill a substantial number of their openings with this type of worker.

table of the 10 sectors with the most vacancies

In many occupations traditionally performed by university graduates, companies now prefer technicians. For example, fewer than 15 percent of job listings for accounting and auditing work require undergraduate or graduate studies. Almost all other ads are targeted towards technicians.

The deficit of technicians and technologists is worrying, given that Colombia is the Latin American country that has devoted the most resources to training the workforce. For decades SENA received a yearly budget equivalent to 2% of the payroll of all firms, which was replaced in 2013 by regular budget resources.

Only 116,000 students (62,000 from SENA) graduated in 2013 with technical degrees, which is just one-eighth of the almost 900,000 job listings posted for this kind of personnel in 2014. Although there are 2,414 technical programs in the country, only 79 are recognized by the Ministry of Education as being of high quality, and none of those 79 are within SENA. The Ministry of National Education lacks formal authority over SENA, which falls under the Ministry of Labor.

Four out of 5 Colombian workers have received only the most basic education; the majority of them have not even completed high school. The quality of that education is dreadful, both academically and in terms of skills, as revealed in the international evaluation system PISA. It would be naive to hope that SENA alone can provide a solution to this situation. But if they worked more closely with the Ministry of Education, they could at least address the problem and recognize their mutual errors.

On one hand, basic education in the country is very biased towards academic content that only has value for those who will pursue undergraduate degrees for more traditional careers. For those that go on to study engineering, it helps to have a basic knowledge of physics, chemistry, and calculus, but how useful are these things for those who will work in the more popular occupations listed in Table 3? For any worker it is more important (besides reading and writing) to have discipline in their work, be a team player, have the ability to express their ideas clearly, have a sense of priorities, and know how to manage their time. Many workers also need manual skills and knowledge of a trade. And all need to be able to enjoy something that enriches their spirit, whether that is sports, music, or reading. Schools are doing very little in these non-cognitive fields.

table of most demanded occupations

On the other hand SENA, although it has valuable technical programs, suffers from the syndrome of all entities that enjoy a fixed budget: excess personnel, waste of resources, and multiplication of activities that serve no distinct objective other than to justify the budget and meet the demands of the government.  As I have heard from various experts on the subject, the entity is a black box, not very connected with the productive sector and always overwhelmed by their own webs of bureaucratic and administrative red tape.  

Jeisson Arley Cárdenas Rubio, researcher at Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, and Jaime Mauricio Montaña Doncel, student at Paris School of Economics contributed to this report.