Abstract:

Development and exploration of Arctic natural resources has become a strategic field for the Arctic states. Successful implementation of promising industrial projects significantly depends on the availability of qualified personnel. At the same time, there are threats to the staffing of the Arctic territories due to objective reasons (negative demographic trends in most of the Arctic states outflow of workforce to regions with more comfortable climatic conditions, etc.) and due to subjective reasons: entrants continue to choose "intuitively" their future occupation without considering the trends of region economic development. This often leads to youth unemployment, as graduates cannot find work in accordance with their diplomas.

The paper presents a new approach for education and training of personnel in Russia aimed at graduate’s employability improvement. The main idea is that the choice of future occupation by students should take into account upcoming trends of regional economic development. Testing of the new approach was carried out on the data of the Russia's Arctic zone. This experience is important because the largest part - the 1/3 of the entire Arctic territory among all of the countries (USA, Canada, Norway and Denmark) belong to Russia.

The basis of the study is an algorithm that combines the development of the forecast founded on econometric models, the employers’ survey and evaluation of the education system possibilities.

The developed forecast became the basis for the evaluation of the potential of the Russia Arctic zone educational institutions to train graduates in demand. Training on demanded occupations results graduates employability. The regions that face the highest deficit of graduates in the near future were revealed as well as specified vocational specialties, which would have the most significant gap.
Top 25 blue-collar occupations in demand were generated based on the results of employers’ survey and analysis of open sources of information. This list is proposed to consider as a reference while developing the priorities for education and training. It is also necessary to use this information for the purposes of the graduates’ career guidance.

According to the results of the analysis proposals for education authorities and educational institutions were developed in order to increase the efficiency of the education system and the level of graduates’ employment. These proposals include clarification of the education system targets and the formation of the admission quotas in educational institutions in strict accordance with the staffing needs forecast. The forecast allows taking into account "today" and any "tomorrow" needs in the Arctic zone. It will allow training specialists taking into account the time lag of 3-5 years before entering the labor market and provide their employability.

The recommendations may be useful for the Russian Arctic regions and other Arctic countries to increase youth employability, to increase the demand for graduates trained, increase the flexibility of the regional education and training systems.

Keywords:

Demanded occupations, forecast, employers’ survey, Russia's Arctic zone.