More skilled workers are needed to help the recession recovery process.

For economic recovery to continue, UK employees need to hone their skills while employers should invest in more training, according to a report from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES).

The National Strategic Skills Audit found that within the OECD, the UK has the lowest growth in highly skilled jobs, with leadership, management and technical skills being in most need.

What’s more, there has been a worrying increase – 24% from 2005 to 2009 – in the number of people classed by their employers as ‘not fully proficient at their jobs.’

Chris Humphries CBE, Chief Executive of the UKCES, said: “Despite having a more skilled workforce than at any time in our history, we still lag behind many of our major economic competitors. In order to catch up, skills investment needs to connect more to the jobs that need doing now and that will need doing in the future.

“We need more and better jobs not just to recover from the recession, but to be better than we were before it.”

A previous report published by the UKCES, the National Employer Skills Survey for England, surveyed almost 80,000 employers at the height of last year’s recession.

It found that around 93% of the UK workforce was deemed by employers to be “proficient at their jobs”, however 3% of employers had vacancies they could not fill because they couldn’t find candidates with suitable skills, qualifications or experience.