The United Kingdom will be launching training options for adults in order for them to learn new skills and thus boost their productivity levels, helping the country to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated on Tuesday.

The unemployment rate is already at more than 4%, and it is expected to rise even further over the coming weeks with the job subsidy scheme that was put in place very early in the pandemic being replaced by a scaled-back job support programme next month.

According to excerpts sent by his office, Johnson will say in a speech that “We cannot, alas, save every job. What we can do is give people the skills to find and create new and better jobs”.

Johnson added that “We’re transforming the foundations of the skills system so that everyone has the chance to train and retrain.”

The training measures will include funding to allow adults that have not got qualifications to attend certain college courses without paying fees, as well as there being flexible loans that allow people to space out their study and transfer credits between colleges.

Apart from this, the UK government will also be aiming to increase the number of apprenticeships and internships, with benefits for those small and medium firms that are taking in apprentices, and there will also be an extension of a pilot programme known as digital skill boot camps to new locations.

According to the government, the number of people doing vocational training has been gradually falling throughout the last two decades, with 10% of adults in the UK having a higher technical qualification as their highest qualification, which is very low when compared to Germany’s 20% and Canada’s 34%.

There have been numerous complaints throughout the years from British businesses that the workforce has a shortage of skills, with the country’s productivity being consistently lower than in some comparable economies.