ABSTRACT
Skill shortages in a nation's workforce can act as a barrier to the introduction of new technologies and lead to a reduction of a nation's competitiveness. The relationships between the introduction of new technology, skills shortages and training are not fully understood. The chapter focuses on the craft workers and deals with the relationships between new technology, skills shortages and training strategies for craft workers within local labour markets. Any potential impact of craft skills shortages on the use of new technology in a particular local labour market must be seen in perspective, and regional variations in the use of new process technology cannot be seen as a simple response to regional variations in the availability of workers with craft skills. Firms developing new process technologies may be slow in spreading their supply and maintenance network from the original region and other regions may lack support facilities for new technologies.
