UNSKILLED workers in the county face a dismal future, business chiefs have warned.

With thousands of jobs shifting to China, India and Eastern Europe, there will be fewer opportunities in Kent and Medway for people with little to offer.

The CBI believes that within a "scholastic generation" there will be almost no jobs for anyone without skills. The warning has serious implications for employment opportunities and future economic development in the Thames Gateway and Ashford growth areas.

Digby Jones, director-general of the CBI, spelt out the dangers at the organisation's annual conference in Birmingham.

He said: "We've got three and a half million adults in the workforce pulling down a wage in this country who can't read. They will be the unskilled people who won't be in work in 10 years' time."

It was not just unskilled jobs that were migrating abroad. Increasingly, semi-skilled work would also go off-shore.

Unveiling a survey of the impact of off-shoring and outsourcing on British jobs, Mr Jones said: "It means skills have never been more important. We think that within just a few years there won't be any work in Britain for unskilled people.

"So the Western democracies constantly have to upskill and reskill for ever. This is a dynamic that is not going to go away and we cannot say for one minute ‘job done’.”

The problem is particularly acute in Kent. According to figures just released by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) for Kent and Medway:

* 210,000 residents are insufficiently literate;

* 209,000 are functionally innumerate;

* 322,000 people (29 per cent of the workforce) have no qualifications;

* 533,000 people of working age (51 per cent) do not have at least a Level 2 qualification.

It found 1.13m workers have lower qualification and skill levels than the rest of the South East, with much of the employment base concentrated in lower skill occupations. Relatively few people are employed in higher skill occupations, such as managers and senior officials, professionals and associate professionals.

Simon Norton, the LSC's executive director, said: "We must raise our game when it comes to adult training and ensure that we develop the highly skilled workforce necessary to retain and increase our competitiveness at national and international levels.

"We also need adults with better skills to respond to the opportunities created by growth in the Thames Gateway, Ashford and elsewhere. Excellence in training is a prerequisite for business success in Kent and Medway."

Nigel Bourne, CBI regional director for Kent, called on teachers and others involved in education to better understand the needs of business.

He said: "It's a very important message for the whole education system in Kent. It is vital they understand and realise the need to train their students to undertake higher-value and better jobs than they've had to in the past."

But he was worried "a lot of teachers still don't understand the skills and abilities that business needs". It was vital for business to tell schools and colleges the skills they were looking for.

Kent Reliance Building Society has outsourced highly skilled business processing from India. It claimed the necessary skills were not available locally.

The LSC recommends increasing the capacity of colleges to "meet the learning needs of businesses", working with developers to increase investment in training, establishing a "Learning Campus" in Ashford, launching a Basic Skills Consortium, improving careers advice, and setting up local groups where businesses, colleges and schools can meet.