Short supply of economic smarts
Sound economic thinking is needed to take advantage of new business opportunities, but also to navigate some of its other impacts such as upward pressure on housing prices, skills shortages and inflated wage rates – and the local economic skills needed are in short supply.
National and overseas consultancy firms often don’t have the local perspective that public policymakers and private businesses need.
And it’s not just trained economists that businesses are crying out for. Compliance issues, sustainability, trade liberalisation and the economic forces of globalisation are adding new layers of operational and strategic complexity and greater economic understanding is becoming integral to good business and public policy decision-making.
The feedback to Curtin Business School is that companies and the public sector need more staff who are able to provide an economic perspective to their work, whether they are engineers, financial analysts, bankers or any other kind of business professional. They also need more in-house economic forecasting skills to help them drive the strategic direction of their business.
The education sector must be able to respond quickly to these professional skill gaps which, if left unaddressed, will have economic and social consequences. More courses are needed to provide a solid grounding in applied economics to those without an economics background but who possess a degree in another field. The course will, for example, equip them with the quantitative and qualitative skills to analyse economic problems and draw inferences for their company’s future direction.
Education options like this will make a real difference to the critical shortfall in economic skills that this State is currently experiencing and allow businesses to reach their full potential.