European Skills Shortages

European Skills Shortages: "Economies in Europe are struggling, yet the demand for highly qualified people is projected to rise by almost 16m throughout Europe by 2020. If Europe is to compete with emerging economies, high skills levels are essential. Europe also needs to harness the power of apprenticeships, which are proving so successful in Germany. The UK needs to embrace apprenticeships as well as continue to address the basic skills needed for employment – around a fifth of UK adults do not have basic numeracy skills.

Coupled with this is the “talent drain” where a proportion of the the very best people opt out of their home country and ply their trade or profession elsewhere leading to a downward spiral of available talent. We are seeing this in Southern Europe and Ireland at present.

Globally, skilled trades such as electricians and plumbers, along with engineers, teachers, healthcare professionals and chefs , tend to be in shortest supply."

Most new jobs go to immigrants : Views and News from Norway

Most new jobs go to immigrants : Views and News from Norway: "Nearly 50,000 new jobs have been created in Norway during the past year and more than 35,000 of them have been filled by immigrants. The numbers, revealed when the government proposed its new state budget this week, show how much Norway now relies on what Finance Minster Sigbjørn Johnsen calls the “arbeidsinnvandrere” (literally, job immigrants) to keep the economy rolling."

“There is a very strong need for labour in the Norwegian economy,” Johnsen said when presenting the new budget on Monday. “It wouldn’t have been possible to get all the work done and have the growth we’ve seen without the labour immigration.”

‘Competence’ in demand
Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported how 316,000 more persons are now employed in Norway than in 2005, when the left-center government coalition of which Johnsen is a part took power. Of that, according to budget documents, 200,000 of the new jobs have gone to immigrants.

In 2011 alone, employment rose by around 47,000. Of those taking on the new jobs, around 35,000 (70 percent) were immigrants.

“Those coming to Norway (many from crisis-hit European countries) have high competence what we will need in the years head,” Johnsen said. He worries, though, that the stream of job-seekers coming to Norway, and the relatively easy access that gives employers to labour, means companies may not need to fight so hard for talent or create possibilities for those still struggling to join the workforce. “We need to mobilize our own labour force as well,” he said.

Plans to stick around
Johnsen thinks the employment growth will continue and that Norway will continue to attract highly qualified workers. Among them, for example, is Romas Stakauskas, age 28, who came to Norway in 2009 after losing his job as an engineer in a construction firm in Lithuania. His wife moved to Norway a year later and now he’s working as a production operator for a company in Hedmark. The couple have an infant, bought and fixed up a home in Skarnes and now Stakauskas’ wife Doville, age 27, is looking for work as well.

“Now we’re beginning to live our own lives,” Stakauskas told DN. “You should never say ‘never’ (regarding a move back to Lithuania), but the way things are now, I think we’ll keep living here.”

Far from all immigrants are as lucky as Stakauskas, and former Labour Minister Hanne Bjurstrøm actually told many of the new arrivals from Spain and other troubled countries to “go home” earlier this year if they didn’t quickly find work. Language barriers remain a problem and not all companies make concessions for employees who haven’t yet learned Norwegian. Unemployment nonetheless is expected to remain at less than 3 percent nationwide and the job market for skilled workers is expected to remain strong, especially for engineers and construction workers. Immigrants otherwise often wind up with jobs Norwegians don’t want to take, in a variety of relatively low-paying fields.

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DutchNews.nl - Dutch unemployment rate is second lowest in Europe

DutchNews.nl - Dutch unemployment rate is second lowest in Europe: "Calculated according to international definitions, the CBS said 5.3% of the Dutch working population was officially unemployed in July. Austria has the lowest unemployment rate at 4.5% and Luxembourg, Germany and Malta also have jobless rates which are well below 6%."

The Federation of European Employers believes immigration and linguistic rules are restricting the employment market

The Federation of European Employers believes immigration and linguistic rules are hampering the employment market. | A Federation View | The Global Recruiter Magazine: "The biggest barrier to mobility within the EU remains its many linguistic divides and it has normally taken the courts to remove the impractical and often unjust nature of  linguistic restrictions imposed on companies.

In France all employment contracts and employment policy documents must be made available in French, even if the lingua franca of a company is not French. Until recently employers in the Flemish Region of Belgium were also required to use Dutch when writing the employment contracts of foreign nationals. It has taken a ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to challenge this Flemish decree. Advocate-General Jaaskinen advised the Court that there is no pan-EU rule harmonising the use of languages in employment contracts. Further to this, the ECJ decided that a law such as the one is question might well discourage applications from job candidates residing outside Flanders or the Netherlands (C-202/11).

The French Supreme Court has also intervened to remove the automatic obligation on international employers under French law to offer redundant employees vacant positions in another country, even if the employee concerned could not speak the native language of the country where they would be redeployed.
In spite of these interventions EU governments continue to introduce laws that discriminate against foreigners and linguistic minorities and in favour of their own mainstream country nationals."

Ireland lifts transitional employment permit restrictions for Bulgarian and Romanian workers

Ireland lifts transitional employment permit restrictions for Bulgarian and Romanian workers: "Ireland's Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation (DJEI) has issued a new regulation that grants immediate unrestricted work authorisation to Bulgarian and Romanian nationals.

According to the European Commission of Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, member states of the European Union can implement measures to integrate the newest member-state nationals of Bulgaria and Romania (also known as accession-country nationals).

However, under transitional measures, all EU member states must grant full freedom of movement and access to labour markets to Bulgarians and Romanians no later than 1 January 2014.

On 20 July, the DJEI officially announced its decision to move forward the mandated transition date and abolish immediately all employment permit requirements for Bulgarian and Romanian national workers."