E-vocational Training, Networking and Wages: New Employability, New Paradoxes?

The paper analyzes the role of e-vocational training in the achievement of new employability conditions that require the emergence of networking, knowledge economy and knowledge society. Under the analytical framework of skill biased technological change (e-SBTC) and from the results of three empirical analysis, four main conclusions have been obtained. First, e-vocational training is not yet strong enough to break the training gap. That is, e-vocational training of workers occurs mainly in more educated and digital skilled-based workers. Second, e-vocational training is revealed as a qualified instrument to improve employability, particularly on the dimensions of acquired skills and satisfaction with the educational design, but less with the training labour applicability. Third, the vast majority of firms, with no structural change, has a problem of relative over-education. That is, they don’t meet the association between a higher educational level and a higher wage. And fourth, although e-vocational training has made considerable progress as a tool to improve workers employability, it actually shows two major weaknesses: 1) the need to enlist more collectives of workers; and, 2) the need to promote e-vocational training as a lever on structural change in firms (complementary with organizational change and ICT uses).