Gordon Brown has urged businesses to continue to upskill the nation's workforce as the economy plunges further into recession.
Speaking at the annual CBI conference in London, the prime minister told companies they were capable of taking the British economy through difficult times and called on them to continue to invest in employees' talent and skills to be able to compete on a global scale with emerging economies.
"Even if there had been no cyclical rise in unemployment, all of us would have to deal with the consequences of a more specialist international division of labour and the resulting restructuring of jobs, and for Britain that means investing in the new talents and skills required for the technological and creative industries," he said.
Brown added that 1 billion new jobs were being created worldwide in the new global economy, and Britain must attract its share of that flow of jobs.
The call to train up the UK's workers came as the CBI urged the government to help prevent small firms collapsing in the economic downturn. CBI boss Richard Lambert warned that without help "there is a real risk we could see healthy firms going under".
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