INSEAD published this week its “Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2023: What a difference ten years can make – What to expect from the next decade” report, where it analyzed the results extracted from 10 editions of the index. In details, the report pointed out that talent inequalities between countries are increasing, mainly based on economic differences, with the correlation between income per capita and GTCI score rising from 0.76 in 2013 to 0.85 in 2023. Always in the same vein, the report revealed that talent inequalities within the same country remain elevated, adding that the slow progress that was achieved towards closing the gender gap has been hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Always on the COVID-19 pandemic front, the report highlighted that the practices implemented during the years 2020-2022 will be here for some time, where highly talented workers are less bound by a physical location due to the emergence of remote working. Accordingly, such talent have a choice to determine where they want to live. As for the next decade, the report predicted that talent competition will gain more attention and grow fiercer, with cities improving their quality of life in order to attract such talent.       

As far as the year 2023 is involved, the INSEAD report provided the scores and relative ranks of a total of 144 countries in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI). In specific, the GTCI is a composite index the value of which is computed using the average score of two equally-weighted sub-indices, namely the Input Sub-Index (including four main pillars: a country’s ability to “Enable”, “Attract”, “Grow”, and “Retain” talent) and the Output Sub-Index (comprising two pillars: “Vocational & Technical Skills” (VT) and “Global Knowledge Skills” (GK)(. In detail, and on a global level, Switzerland maintained its leading position in the GTCI 2023 with a score of 78.96, followed by Singapore (score: 77.11), the United States (score: 76.60), Denmark (score: 76.54) and the Netherlands (score: 74.76) among others.

On a regional basis, the UAE came first in the GTCI 2023 rankings of Arab countries with a score of 62.56 (global rank: 22), followed by Qatar (score: 54.42; global rank: 35), Bahrain (score: 50.44; global rank: 44), and Saudi Arabia (score: 49.86; global rank: 48), only to name a few. Lebanon scored 41.30 in the GTCI 2023 up from 36.62 in the previous year, placing it in the 8^th position among its Arab peers (unchanged annually) and 77^th in the world (up from 84^th last year). In detail, Lebanon ranked 87^th globally in the Input Sub-Index and 56^th in the Output Sub-Index. On the Input Sub-Index front, Lebanon ranked 97^th in the world in the talent enabling pillar (score: 36.04), 79^th in the talent attraction pillar (score: 47.83), 66^th in the talent growth pillar (score: 37.85), and 89^th in the talent retention pillar (score: 45.99). With respect to the Output Sub-Index, Lebanon positioned 70^th in the “Vocational and Technical Skills” criterion (score: 46.28) and 46^th in the “Global Knowledge Skills” criterion (score: 33.79). Always in the same regard, Lebanon was the best performer amongst lower-middle income countries in terms of global knowledge skills. Furthermore, Lebanon’s best performance on the “Enable” front was in the field of Urbanisation (score: 86.88; global rank: 15), on the “Attract” front in the field of Migrant Stock (score: 73.25; global rank: 17), on the “Grow” front in the field of Use of Virtual Social Networks (score: 85.41; global rank: 6), on the “Retain” front in the field of Sanitation (score: 99.12; global rank: 31), on the “Vocational & Technical Skills” front in the field of Ease of Finding Skilled Employees (score: 99.84; global rank: 2), and on the “Global Knowledge Skills” front in the field of Senior Officials and Managers (score: 40.90; global rank: 29).