IMD World Talent Ranking 2020

Figure 2 presents the sub-regional Talent Ranking trend for the years 2016 to 2020. These trends show that Western European countries remain, on average, the most talent competitive in the world. North America, and Eastern Asia place second and third respectively. Ex-CIS and Central Asia, South America and Eastern Europe are instead regions that continue to underperform in the World Talent Ranking 2020. At the factor level ( Figure 3 ), while Western Europe firmly keeps the lead in both the Investment & Development and Readiness factors, North America stands out in the Appeal factor, highlighting the important economic attractiveness of both Canada and the United States for foreign highly skilled workers.

subregions such as Eastern Europe and Southern Asia and The Pacific. In the first case, (Eastern Europe) economies that belong to the subregion generally excel in education and the development of local talent (Investment and Development factor, 2 nd out of 8 subregions) but then they are unable to retain it and/or to attract foreign highly skilled workforce to satisfy the private sector’s needs (Appeal factor, 7 th ; Readiness factor, 6 th ). In the second case, as compared to other regions of the world, countries from the Southern Asia and The Pacific subregion underperform in the development of local talent (Investment and Development factor, 5 th ) but they manage to attract foreign professionals from the international talent pool (Appeal, 3 rd ) ensuring the skills and competences that their local job market needs (Readiness, 3 rd ).

The breakdown of Talent competitiveness by factors also reveals asymmetries in performance present in

Figure 3: Talent Ranking factors performance across regions in 2020

Top 10 countries

Switzerland remains in the top spot as does Denmark in 2 nd place. While Luxembourg moves up two places to 3 rd , Iceland rises to 4 th (from 7 th in 2019). Sweden, Austria and Norway drop to 5 th , 6 th and 7 th , respectively. Canada joins the top 10 in 8 th place and Singapore moves up to 9 th . The Netherlands rounds up the top of the ranking in 10 th . Switzerland maintains a robust performance in the investment and development and appeal factors (1 st in both). It leads the ranking in the effective implementation of apprenticeships, 2 nd in the total public expenditure on education (per student), in the efficiency of its health infrastructure and in the impact of brain drain in its economy.

graduates in ICT, engineering, math and natural sciences) from 26 th to 30 th , although it remains strong in all measures of the availability of skills and competencies. Denmark’s strongest performance at the factor level is in investment and development (2 nd ) in which it ranks 1 st in the prioritization that the private sector assigns to employee training and 6 th in total public expenditure on education (percentage of GDP). In the appeal factor, Denmark ranks 8 th but shows substantial achievements at the indicator level. For example, it ranks 1 st in the prioritization of the attraction and retainment of talent, the level of worker motivation and the implementation of justice. Denmark ranks 6 th in the readiness factor. Although the availability of particular skills remains strong (e.g., 6 th in skilled labor and 2 nd in finance skills), it ranks low in

In the readiness factor, Switzerland ranks 5 th with a drop in the graduates in sciences indicator (percentage of

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IMD WORLD TALENT RANKING 2020