Issue Talent Debt compounds like financial debt

Summary

This issue introduces Talent Debt, EY's term for the gap between the capabilities an organization has and those it needs, understood as the opportunity cost of learning too slowly. Like financial debt, it grows on itself when learning and reinvestment fall behind shifts in technology or markets. Using its Work Reimagined data, EY estimates that 13% of the global workforce lack confidence in the resilience of their skills and also lack chances to develop them. In the US alone, this translates into Talent Debt worth more than US$1t in potential value, a hidden drag on productivity and innovation. The antidote EY proposes is talent liquidity, the speed at which organizations can redeploy capability and retrain both people and AI systems as priorities change. Doing so shrinks both day-to-day delays in reskilling and deeper lags in institutional learning and leadership renewal.