Manpower planning in a market economy with labor market signals

The movement from centrally planned to market economies will not eliminate the need for manpower planning. Rather, it will substantially change the roles manpower planners play and the techniques they use. Manpower planners must become analysts of the labor market. In a market economy, the will be asked for information: (a) to guide private decisions about training; (b) to improve the management of training systems; (c) to identify impediments to competitive labor markets; and (d) to help rationalize public investments in education and training. The authors introduce techniques for manpower planning that acknowledge the dynamic nature of market economies. They reject the idea of forecasting manpower requirements, proposing instead to use signals from the labor market picked up by monitoring movements in wages and employment and evaluating training programs.