Language Knowledge Boosts Prosperity

Posted by European Schoolbooks Ltd, on 2 January 2019. Comments: 0

Have you made New Year's resolutions for 2019? Do they include financial and study goals?

If so, you may be interested in a series of reports which conclude that knowledge of a second, European language can increase your job prospects, boost your income and strengthen the economy.

Increase your job prospects

According to recruitment agency REED, 15% of the jobs which are posted on its reed.co.uk website cite language skills as being beneficial.

The four most in-demand languages are German, French, Spanish and Italian. Of these, Italian is sought in over 7% of foreign-language vacancies, Spanish in almost 10%, French in 20%, and German in a whopping 24% of international-speaking roles.

Boost your income

A report in 2016 by the jobs search engine Adzuna analysed the average salaries of over a million job postings. Vacancies for Italian speakers commanded the 8th highest average salaries, Russian speakers the 7th highest, Spanish the 5th, Dutch the 4th, French the 3rd, and German the highest average salaries.

Strengthen the economy

In 2013 Professor James Foreman-Peck, a professor of economics at Cardiff Business School, estimated that insufficient language skills were costing the UK economy Ł48bn a year, or 3.5% of GDP. Looked at positively, this means that a knowledge of a foreign language could not only improve your personal circumstances, but boost the national economy, too.

Which languages to study?

Mirroring the reports above and the findings of a CBI report in 2016, a Languages for the Future report in 2017 concluded that Spanish, French and German are among the 5 most-needed European languages in the UK. Italian, Russian and Portuguese were listed among the next five most-needed languages.

We hope that this information will help you and the UK to ever greater prosperity in 2019.